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INDICATIONS 



OF 



THE CREATOR. 



BY 



WILLIAM WHEWELL, D.D., 

w 

MASTER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, AND PROFESSOR OF MORAL 
PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. 



V 



PHILADELPHIA: 

CAREY AND HART. 
1845. 






C. SHERMAN, PRINTER, 
19 ST. JAMES STREET. 



CONTENTS. 



Dedication, ---------- v 

Preface, - - - - vii 

ASTRONOMY. 

The Copernican System, ------.-13 

The Nebular Hypothesis, - - - - - - - 14 

PHYSIOLOGY. 

Recognition of Final Causes in Physiology, 21 
The Plans of Animal Forms, - ---.--22 

Use of Final Causes in Physiology, ------ 25 

Question of the Transmutation of Species, ... 35 

Hypothesis of Progressive Tendencies, 37 

GEOLOGY. 

The Question of Creation as related to Science, ... 39 



IV CONTENTS. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY. 

The Idea of Final Causes, 43 

PAL^TIOLOGY. 

Nature of Palcetiology, 54 

Doctrine of Catastrophes and of Uniformity, 57 

Relation of Tradition to Palsetiology, 65 

Of the Conception of a First Cause, 77 

Of the Supreme Cause, 82 



DEDICATION. 



TO 

WILLIAM SMYTH, Esquire, 

PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. 

My dear Professor Smyth, 

I know that you have always felt a peculiar interest in the 
contemplation of Indications of the Creator, drawn from the Crea- 
tion in which we live, and from the Philosophy which we are led 
to frame concerning it : and I think that you will be pleased to see 
a contribution to this train of thought offered at the present mo- 
ment. It will be a gratification to me, if, in publishing it, I am 
allowed to inscribe it to you. 

One who, like myself, has for many years enjoyed your friend- 
ship, and witnessed your influence in this University, may well 
rejoice at having an opportunity of offering an open tribute of 
admiration and regard to the virtues and kindly affections by which 
we have so long profited ; and of expressing his gratitude for the 
pleasure and instruction you have so long diffused among us. And 
I am happy to be able to add that, now, the wider public also has, 
in your published Lectures, the means of judging of our obligations 
to you. All may there see that you have, throughout your labours, 
been zealous and consistent in inculcating those principles of jus- 
tice and mutual forbearance, of moral purpose in political designs, 
and moderation in political action, which, so far as they prevail, 

1* 



VI DEDICATION. 

make the world of human history a more visible representation of 
the will of its Divine Ruler. 

That you may long enjoy the recollection of these your past 
benefits to us, and of our gratitude to you, is the cordial wish and 
prayer of, 

My dear Professor Smyth, 

Your affectionate Friend, 

W. WHEWELL. 

Trinity College, Cambridge, 
February 14, 1845. 



PREFACE. 



The following Extracts are now published from a persuasion 
that they may be interesting to many persons who would be un- 
likely to read the larger works from which they are taken. The 
Philosophy of the Sciences is necessarily a series of somewhat 
abstruse dissertations, and is likely to be acceptable only to thought- 
ful students. The History of Science is a subject of a more popu- 
lar character, yet when the history is carried through all the 
epochs of all the material sciences, probably but few will accom- 
pany the historian through a plan so extensive. But lessons of 
Natural Theology always find a large class of willing readers, 
when there is any thing of novelty in their form. The reflections 
which the following pages contain, being those which result from 
a review of the whole progress of science, and of the principles and 
processes which have been concerned in that progress, necessarily 
differ in many respects from those of other writers on Natural 
Theology. 

Perhaps, also, there may be some recommendation of these 
Indications of the Creator in their being the result of researches 
and reasonings undertaken with no purpose of bringing such indi- 
cations into view, but with objects of quite another kind. For 
when an author writes with a theological conclusion set before 
him from the first, as that to which he must conduct his argument, 
there may arise a suspicion of a defect of candour and comprehen- 
siveness in what he writes. It may be supposed that he will strain 
or evade any thing that points away from his predetermined end. 
But a narrative of the whole History of Science, and an analysis 
of the processes by which sciences have been formed, are under- 
takings too large, and their course too rigidly determined by their 
plan, to allow them to be drawn aside by partial and irrelevant 
considerations. The passages now extracted as having a Theo- 



Vlll PREFACE. 

logical bearing will be seen, on reference, to flow naturally from 
the trains of thought with which they are combined in the original 
works. 

The main points to which these extracts refer are the Indications 
of Design in the Creator, and of a Supernatural Origin of the 
World ; and, as connected with this latter point, the consistency of 
the Inductive with the Revealed History of the World. I have 
not attempted to combine the Extracts into a system, but have given 
them in the order in which they occur in the original works. I 
have added a short extract from another work, on the subject of the 
Nebular Hypothesis, bearing on the same questions. 

The questions which belong to Natural Theology are, in sub- 
stance, the same from age to age ; but they change their aspect 
with every advance or supposed advance in the Inductive Sciences. 
I have (p. 53) endeavoured to show the assertion to be quite base- 
less, that, as science advances, final causes recede before it, and 
disappear one after the other. I have also, I trust, made it appear, 
by a survey of the whole history of one great science, Physiology, 
that in that science the Doctrine of Final Causes has been not only 
consistent with the successive steps of discovery, but has been the 
great instrument of every step of discovery from Galen to Cuvier. 

I have further attempted to explain that the modern doctrine of 
Unity of Plan in different kinds of animals does not at all neces- 
sarily contradict the Doctrine of Final Causes : that Morphology 
is not necessarily inconsistent with Teleology, But I have also 
had to show that, in modern times, the two doctrines have been put 
in opposition to each other. The Morphologists have declared, on 
the ground of their peculiar views, that they could not allow them- 
selves to ascribe to the Creator any intention, (p. 28.) And pro- 
bably an impression as if the evidence of Design in the Creator 
were obscured and weakened, is generally produced by the first 
aspect of morphological doctrines, in minds eager for new views, 
and yet led, by their own want of the discoverer's power, to borrow 
their new views from others. 

I have already ventured to express an opinion* that Inductive 
Minds, those which have been able to discover Laws of Nature, 
have also commonly been ready to believe in an Intelligent Author 
of Nature ; while Deductive Minds, those which have employed 

* Bridgewater Treatise, Book iii. Ch. v. and vi. 



PREFACE. IX 

themselves in tracing the consequences of Laws discovered by 
others, have been willing to rest in Laws, without looking beyond 
to an Author of Laws. I have taken the liberty also (p. 33) to 
apply this remark to the case of the opposition between Teleology 
and Morphology ; and have remarked that Cuvier, the great Zoo- 
logical Discoverer of our time, was a firm believer in Creative 
Design, notwithstanding the arguments of the Morphologists who 
controverted such doctrines. I have, in the following pages, so 
fully discussed this subject, that it would be superfluous to add any 
thing here, if it were not that, as I have already said, morphologi- 
cal views have a peculiar tendency to appear unfavourable to the 
belief of final causes, in minds to which they are new. 

But as morphological views, when they are first presented, ap- 
pear to some persons to dim the brightness of those proofs of Crea- 
tive Design with which we are familiar; so, on the other hand, 
when a newly discovered instance of Creative Design is first made 
known to us by the zoological discoverer, it is impossible for most 
persons not to see in it a clear and strong indication of an Intelli- 
gent Creator ; however much this conviction may afterwards be 
obscured and confused by morphological generalities of expression. 
I have given an example of such a new evidence of design, in Mr. 
Owen's discoveries with regard to the process of suckling of the 
kangaroo (p. 47). I do not think any one, becoming acquainted 
for the first time with the provisions for this purpose, as described 
by Mr. Owen, can help receiving the conviction which Mr. Owen 
expresses, that this is an "irrefragable evidence of creative fore- 
thought." 

Mr. Owen, in this as in many other parts of his writings, is an 
instance, in addition to those which I have previously adduced, of 
the teleological turn of the Inductive Mind. It would be going too 
far to say, conversely, that those whose minds are not inductive 
have a bias towards morphology. But yet this would not be too 
much to say, if morphology were very loosely understood. We 
should not be surprised at the morphologist coming to conclusions 
very different from those of the teleological discoverer, if that unity 
of plan which the morphologists assert, be made to consist in re- 
semblances of the most heterogeneous and fantastical kind ; if, for 
instance, plants were supposed to be analogous to the branching 
forms of crystallization; or trees growing out of the ground to the 
electrical brush : if some animals were supposed to fall in with the 



X PREFACE. 

supposed unity of plan because they have abundant tail, and orna- 
ments for the head in the form of tufts, crests, or horns, while others 
occupy an analogous position to these because they are of a soft 
and sluggish character and abundantly edible: if, again, we have 
a part of a classification in which some animals are placed because 
they have been denounced as impure, with other animals because 
they are wild and striped, and others because they have spines and 
prickles : if, finally, notions of moral judgments and of symbolism 
are introduced into natural history, and we are told of classes of 
animals which are symbolically types of evil. Morphology, pur- 
sued with such habits of mind, cannot, we should suppose from all 
the analogy which the history of science lends us, lead to any solid 
truth, either in natural history or in philosophy. 

There is one morphological doctrine of modern times which has 
attracted much notice, in consequence of its being imagined to 
offer a solution of the great difficulty of the uniformitarian theory 
in geology, namely, the appearance of new species and classes of 
animals as we proceed from the earlier to the later formations. 
The morphological doctrine of which I speak is, that the kinds of 
animals may be arranged in a series ascending from lower to 
higher : and that each animal of a higher kind, in the progress of 
its embryo state, passes through states which are the final condition 
of the lower kind. The application of this morphological doctrine 
to geological difficulty is this : that the higher kinds of animals 
came later, and were developed from the lower kinds, which came 
earlier in the series, by new peculiar conditions, operating upon 
the embryo, and carrying it to a higher stage. Now in the appa- 
rent simplicity of this doctrine, thus enunciated in general terms, 
we have that which recommends it to those who accept such doc- 
trines in their general shape. But the zoologist and the geologist, 
who can test its general assertions by the special facts with which 
their researches have made them acquainted, know that the facts 
do not agree with this doctrine. Without going into detail on this 
subject, I venture to offer the following remarks. 

It is not at all agreed among eminent physiologists,* that animals 
can be arranged in a series ascending from lower to J uglier, such 
that each animal of a higher kind in its embryo state passes through 
the successive stages of the lower kinds ; the characters of these 

* I make these remarks on the authority of a physiological friend. 



PREFACE. XI 

stages being (in the asserted doctrine) taken from the brain and 
the heart, and man being the highest point of the series. For such 
physiologists assert, that the brain of the human embryo does not 
resemble, at any period, however early, the brain of any Mollusk 
or of any Articulate, which are two of the lower stages. It never 
passes through a stage comparable or analogous to a permanent 
condition of the same organ in any Invertebrate Animal. And in 
like manner the spinal cord in the human vertebras at no period 
agrees with the corresponding part of the lower kinds of animals. 
The moment it becomes visible in the human embryo, it is entirely 
dorsal in position ; while in Mollusks and Articulates a great part, 
or nearly the whole is ventral. The same is true of the heart, or 
centre of the vascular system, which has always a different relative 
position to the great nervous centre in the Human Embryo from 
what it has in any Articulate Animal, and in most Mollusks. 

Again ; the order of lower and higher stages of developement of 
the human embryo, does not agree with the successive stages of 
animal life at successive periods of the earth's history as disclosed 
by geology. For even if we were to admit, what has not been 
proved, that the lowest kind of animal developement, which has 
been termed polygastric monads, exist in the earliest fossiliferous 
rocks, these rocks also manifest the higher types of Echinodermal, 
Articulate, and Molluscous Animals; while the human germ, com- 
mencing with a form and vital properties analogous to those of the 
monad, passes from the monad stage at once to the Vertebrate, and 
never enters or typifies the Radiate, the Articulate, or the Mollusc- 
ous series of organic forms : whereas these forms of Invertebrates 
have preceded the Vertebrate forms on the earth's surface accord- 
ing to the best evidence disclosed by geology. 

Moreover in the Vertebrate, as well as in the Invertebrate part 
of the animal series, the asserted order fails. It has been pointed 
out by others,* that in order to produce the asserted accordance 
between the order of zoological developement and geological suc- 
cession, geological facts are misrepresented in the most flagrant 
manner. For Vertebrate animals do exist in the Silurian rocks, 
from which the asserted law excludes them. Again ; if we are 
to have a geological period eminently characterized by Saurians, 
it must be that of the lias and oolites, and not that of the new red 

* Parker's Magazine, Feb. 1845, p. 102. 



Xll PREFACE. 

sandstone, as asserted in the hypothetical scheme ; while one of the 
Saurians which most approaches the mammalian character, has 
recently been found in a formation below those in which the more 
ordinary Saurian forms occur. Again; birds, which the new law 
places in the oolitic group, have left their traces on the earlier 
formation of the new red sandstone. The new law finds geological 
epochs corresponding to some of the orders of quadrupeds, namely 
the rodents, ruminants, digitigrades, and quadrumans ; but it gives 
no place to the other orders, which might claim one with equal 
reason, pachyderms, marsupials, plantigrades and edentates. Fi- 
nally, the law requires the monkey to be placed in the newer 
tertiarks ; whereas their remains have been found in the older 
tertiaries of France, India, and England. 

Further, the doctrine of the developement of the kinds of animals 
from one kind to another by the influence of external conditions, is 
contrary to the conclusions of the most esteemed physiologists, as is 
stated in the following pages. This doctrine is coupled with the 
assertion of the origin of living beings without an egg or other 
living parent. This assertion is at variance with the latest and 
most careful, as well as with all preceding experiments, of eminent 
physiologists.* And the tenet that any animal can be advanced to 
a higher stage by a period of gestation prolonged beyond the usual 
time, is contrary to all fact. The advancement of the vital organs 
to more perfect stages of developement requires the stimulus of 
respiration and muscular action, for which birth is essential. Under 
these conditions, the organs of animals have been developed beyond 
their usual state ; but, as is stated in the following pages, never to 
a stage beyond that which characterizes the species. 

I have hitherto spoken in general terms of the stages of animal 
organization, meaning by that, such stages as fish, lizard, bird, 
beast. And I have spoken as if there were, in the question before 
us, no difficulty, except that of advancing from one of these stages 
to another. But in fact there have been and are existing on the 
earth many kinds of fish, many kinds of saurians, many of birds, 
many of beasts. These have the most various forms and habits, 
with an internal organization of each, which, though wonderful, is 
in a great measure intelligible, when considered as designed for 
the animal's support and preservation according to its habits. But 

* Owen's Lectures, 1843, p. 33. 



FREFACU. Xlll 

to arrange all these kinds of animals, that is, the whole animal 
creation, in a series, as successive stages of one line of develope- 
ments, or of any ramified line ; and to make the form and the habits 
of each the result of the stage of developement at which the ani- 
mal has arrived ; is a mode of speculating which is the opposite 
of that which all successful zoological speculation has followed, and 
may be expected to lead to opposite results. 

The same imperfection in the evidence would be found, if we 
were to examine, in other subjects as well as in zoology, the as- 
serted law of the identity of the stages of natural developement of 
the faculties, ascending from beast to man, with the probable his- 
tory of mankind. For instance, the view of the speech of man as 
of the same nature with the signs by which animals express their 
feelings and purposes, is a view which leaves out of sight the es- 
sential character of language. For the essential nature of language 
consists, not in its expressing particular feelings and purposes, but 
in its expressing thoughts and things in a general manner. Words 
express abstract thoughts, each of which may be applied to innu- 
merable particular objects; and Human Reason can deal with 
thoughts so abstracted, and by means of them, can express Truth, 
which it is her peculiar privilege to contemplate. There are, in 
animals, no germs of this power of abstraction, this apprehension 
of abstract and general Truth. The Instinct of animals cannot 
become the Reason of man, by any process of developement. We 
cannot unfold the mind of a spider or a bee into the mind of a 
geometer. 

On the other subjects to which the Extracts refer, it does not 
appear necessary to add any thing to what is there said. The 
opinions there expressed have been for some time before the world ; 
and are such as, I trust, can give just offence to no one. 

Trinity College, Cambridge, 
February 14, 1845. 



EXTRACTS, 

ETC. 



ASTRONOMY. 

THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM. 



[About k. d. 1500, Copernicus had satisfied himself of the truth 
of the Heliocentric Theory, according to which the planets, and the 
earth as one of them, revolve round the sun as the centre of their 
motions. His book De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium was 
published in 1543, the year of his death. In 1610 Galileo, having 
invented a telescope, discovered Jupiter's satellites and the moon* 
like phases of Venus; and these discoveries supplied additional 
arguments for the truth of the Copernican system. This system 
Galileo afterwards defended in his writings, which were on that 
account condemned as heretical by the Inquisition.] 

* The doctrines promulgated by Copernicus excited no visible 
alarm among the theologians of his own time ; we may assign as a 
reason for this, that those who were disposed to assert the sway of 
authority in all matters of belief, had not yet been roused and ruffled 
by the aggressions of innovators in philosophy and religion, as they 
soon afterwards were. Probably, also, we ought to take into account 
the different temper and circumstances of the ultramontane and 
Italian learned men. The latter, living under the immediate 
shadow of the papal chair, were necessarily less bold in their specu- 
lations, and less open in their promulgation of any opinions which 
might have a taint of heresy. This influence operated less strongly 
in Poland and Germany ; and we find no evidence which leads us 
to deny to these countries the glory of having received the Coper- 
nican system of the world, from the first, with satisfaction, and 
without bigoted opposition. The great religious reform which had 
its rise in Germany about the time of the promulgation of the 
Copernican system, showed sufficiently that that was the land where 
opinions would assert their freedom; and where authority could 
not, with prudence, urge superfluous claims. 

But in Italy the church entertained the persuasion that her 

* History of the Inductive Sciences. Book v. Chap, iii, Sect. 4. 

2 



14 ASTRONOMY. 

authority could not be upheld at all, without maintaining it to be 
supreme on all points. The spirit of dogmatism of the middle ages 
had descended upon the ecclesiastical institutions of the seventeenth 
century ; and in consistency with that spirit, it was criminal to 
disturb received doctrines, or to separate philosophy from religion. 
The tenet of the earth being at rest in the centre of the universe, 
was not only a part of the established school-philosophy, but was 
also, it was conceived, sanctioned by Scripture. The Copernican 
system, therefore, so far as it came into view, was looked at with 
suspicion and aversion. But though this system is afterwards, in 
the official condemnation of it, spoken of as " entertained by many,'' 
it never came under the notice of the spiritual judges in any con- 
spicuous manner, till it had been illustrated by Galileo's discoveries, 
and recommended by his writings. 

The story of the condemnation of Galileo by the Inquisition, for 
asserting the motion of the earth, and of his formal renunciation of 
this doctrine in the presence of his judges, has been so often told, 
that I need not here repeat the details. It rather belongs to our 
purpose to consider what lessons may be gathered from it with re- 
gard to the progress of science. 

One reflection which occurs is, that both Galileo's behaviour and 
that of his judges, appear to disclose some Italian traits of character. 
The assumption of supreme authority in all matters of opinion, an 
assumption unsuited to the powers and condition of man, had led, 
it would seem, to a kind of artificial state of compromise, in which 
men's published opinions were treated as a point of decorum only, 
the truth being left out of consideration. Thus Galileo seems to 
have expected that the flimsiest veil of professed submission in his 
belief would enable his arguments in favour of the Copernican doc- 
trine to pass unvisited ; and the inquisitors were satisfied with a 
renunciation which they could not believe to be sincere. This 
artificial state, again, was probably one occasion of the furtive mode 
of insinuating his doctrines, so much employed by Galileo, which 
some of his historians admire as subtle irony, and others blame as 
insincerity. Nor do we see any thing to lead us to believe that 
Galileo was not at all times ready to make such submissions as the 
spiritual tribunals required; although undoubtedly he was also very 
desirous of promoting the cause of what he conceived to be philoso- 
phical truth. The same absence of earnestness appears on the other 
side, in the courtesy and indulgence with which, as is now almost 
universally allowed, Galileo was treated throughout the course of 
the proceedings against him. For his being confined in the dun- 
geons of the Inquisition, as his lot has sometimes been described, 
appears to have consisted principally in his being placed under some 
slight restrictions, first, in the house of Nicolini, the ambassador of 
his own sovereign, the Duke of Tuscany, and afterwards in the 
country-seat of Archbishop Piccolomini, one of his own warmest 
friends. It appears to be not going too far to suppose that the ex- 
travagant assumptions of the church of Rome, which it was impos- 
sible sincerely to allow, and necessary to evade by artifice, generated 



THE COTERNICAN SYSTEM. 15 

in the philosophers of Italy an acuteness and subtlety, but also a 
suppleness and servility very different from the vigorous indepen- 
dent habits of thought of Germany and England. 

But there remains something more to be attended to in the case 
of Galileo; for though the See of Rome might exaggerate the 
claims of religious authority, there is a question of no small real 
difficulty, which the progress of science often brings into notice, as 
it did then. The revelation on which our religion is founded, seems 
to declare, or to take for granted, opinions on points on which science 
also gives her decision; and we then come to this dilemma, — that 
doctrines, established by a scientific use of reason, may seem to 
contradict the declarations of revelation according to our view of its 
meaning; — and yet, that we cannot, in consistency with our reli- 
gious views, make reason a judge of the truth of revealed doctrines. 
\n the case of astronomy, on which Galileo was called in question, 
the general sense of cultivated and sober-minded men has long ago 
drawn the distinction between religious and physical tenets which 
is necessary to resolve this dilemma. On this point, it is reasonably 
held, that the phrases which are employed in Scripture respecting 
astronomical facts, are not to be made use of to guide our scientific 
opinions ; they may be supposed to answer their end if they fall in 
with common notions, and are thus effectually subservient to the 
moral and religious import of revelation. But the establishment of 
this distinction was not accomplished without long and distressing 
controversies. Nor, if we wish to include all cases in which the 
same dilemma may again come into play, is it easy to lay down an 
adequate canon for the purpose. For we can hardly foresee, before- 
hand, what part of the past history of the universe may eventually 
be found to come within the domain of science; or what bearing 
the tenets, which science establishes, may have upon our view of 
the providential and revealed government of the world. But with- 
out attempting here to generalize on this subject, there are two re- 
flections which maybe worth our notice; they are supported by 
what took place in reference to astronomy on the occasion of which 
we are speaking; and may, at other periods, be applicable to other 
sciences. 

In the first place, the meaning which any generation puts upon 
the phrases of Scripture, depends, more than is at first sight sup- 
posed, upon the received philosophy of the time. Hence, while 
men imagine that they are contending for revelation, they are, in 
fact, contending for their own interpretation of revelation, uncon- 
sciously adapted to what they believe to be rationally probable. 
And the new interpretation, which the new philosophy requires, 
and which appears to the older school to be a fatal violence done to 
the authority of religion, is accepted by their successors without the 
dangerous results which were apprehended. When the language 
of Scripture, invested with its new meaning, has become familiar 
to men, it is found that the ideas which it calls up, are quite as 
reconcilable as the former ones were, with the soundest religious 
views. And the world then looks back with surprise at the error 



16 ASTRONOMY. 

of those who thought that the essence of revelation was involved in 
their own arbitrary version of some collateral circumstance. At 
the present day we can hardly conceive how reasonable men should 
have imagined that religious reflections-on the stability of the earth, 
and the beauty and use of the luminaries which revolve round it, 
would he interfered with by its being acknowledged that this rest 
and motion are apparent only. 

In the next place, we may observe that those who thus adhere 
tenaciously to the traditionary or arbitrary mode of understanding 
Scriptural expressions of physical events, are always strongly con- 
demned by succeeding generations. They are looked upon with 
contempt by the world at large, who cannot enter into the obsolete 
difficulties with which they encumbered themselves; and with pity 
by the more considerate and serious, who know how much sagacity 
and right-mindedness are requisite for the conduct of philosophers 
and religious men on such occasions; but who know also how weak 
and vain is the attempt, to get rid of the difficulty by merely de- 
nouncing the new tenets as inconsistent with religious belief, and 
by visiting the promulgators of them with severity such as the state 
of opinions and institutions may allow. The prosecutors of Galileo 
are still held up to the scorn and aversion of mankind ; although, 
as we have seen, they did not act till it seemed that their position 
compelled them to do so, and then proceeded with all the gentle- 
ness and moderation which were compatible with judicial forms. 

THE KEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 

[* Laplace has proved that the state of the solar system is stable: 
that is, the ellipses which the planets describe will always remain 
nearly circular, and the axis of revolution of the earth will never 
deviate much from its present position. He has shown also that 
this stability depends on the fact that the planets all move in the 
same direction, in orbits of small eccentricity, and slightly inclined 
to each other. He has moreover given a mathematical proof that 
this fact is not accidental. Hence we may regard this arrangement 
as the result of design, and as intended to secure the stability of 
the system.] 

t We have referred to Laplace, as a profound mathematician, 
who has strongly expressed the opinion, that the arrangement by 
which the stability of the solar system is secured is not the result 
of chance ; that " a primitive cause has directed the planetary 
motions." This author, however, having arrived, as we have done, 
at this conviction, does not draw from it the conclusion which has 
appeared to us so irresistible, that " the admirable arrangement of 
the solar system cannot but be the work of an intelligent and most 
powerful being." He quotes these expressions, which are those 

* Bridgewater Treatise. Book II., chap. iii. 
t lb. Book II., chap. vii. 



THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 17 

of Newton, and points at them as instances where that great philo- 
sopher had deviated from the method of true philosophy. lie him- 
self proposes an hypothesis concerning the nature of the primitive 
cause of which he conceives the existence to be thus probable: and 
this hypothesis, on account of the facts which it attempts to com- 
bine, the view of the universe which it presents, and the eminence 
of the person by whom it is propounded, deserves our notice. 

1. Laplace conjectures that in the original condition of the solar 
system, the sun revolved upon his axis, surrounded by an atmo- 
sphere which, in virtue of an excessive heat, extended far beyond 
the orbits of all the planets, the planets as yet having no existence. 
The heat gradually diminished, and as the solar atmosphere con- 
tracted by cooling, the rapidity of its rotation increased by the 
laws of rotatory motion, and an exterior zone of vapour was de- 
tached from the rest, the central attraction being no longer able to 
overcome the increased centrifugal force. This zone of vapour 
might in some cases retain its form, as we see it in Saturn's ring; 
but more usually the ring of vapour would break into several 
masses, and these would generally coalesce into one mass, which 
would revolve about the sun. Such portions of the solar atmo- 
sphere, abandoned successively at different distances, would form 
u planets in the state of vapour." These masses of vapour, it ap- 
pears from mechanical considerations, would have each its rotatory 
motion, and as the cooling of the vapour still went on, would each 
produce a planet, which might have satellites and rings, formed 
from the planet in the same manner as the planets were formed 
from the atmosphere of the sun. 

It may easily be conceived that all the primary motions of a 
system so produced would be nearly circular, nearly in the plane 
of the original equator of the solar rotation, and in the direction of 
that rotation. Reasons are offered also to show that the motions of 
the satellites thus produced and the motions of rotation of the 
planets must be in the same direction. And thus it is held that the 
hypothesis accounts for the most remarkable circumstances in the 
structure of the solar system: namely, the motions of the planets 
in the same direction, and almost in the same plane; the motions 
of the satellites in the same direction as those of the planets; the 
motions of rotation of these different bodies still in the same direc- 
tion as the other motions, and in planes not much different; the 
small eccentricity of the orbits of the planets, upon which condi- 
tion, along with some of the preceding ones, the stability of the 
system depends; and the position of the source of light and heat 
in the centre of the system. 

It is not necessary for the purpose, nor suitable to the plan of the 
present treatise, to examine, on physical grounds, the probability of 
the above hypothesis. It is proposed by its author, with great 
diffidence, as* a conjecture only. We might therefore, very reason- 
ably put off all discussion of the bearings of this opinion upon our 
views of the government of the world, fill the opinion itself should 
have assumed a less indistinct and precarious form. It can be no 

2* 



18 ASTRONOMY. 

charge against our doctrines, that there is a difficulty in reconciling 
with them arbitrary guesses and half-formed theories. We shall, 
however, make a few observations upon this nebular hypothesis, as 
it may he termed. 

2. If we grant, for a moment, the hypothesis, it by no means 
proves that the solar system was formed without the intervention 
of intelligence and design. It only transfers our view of the skill 
exercised, and the means employed, to another part of the work. 
For, how came the sou and its atmosphere to have such materials, 
such motions, such a constitution, that these consequences followed 
from their primordial condition ? How came the parent vapour thus 
to be capable of coherence, separation, contraction, solidification ? 
How came the laws of its motion, attraction, repulsion, condensa- 
tion, to be so fixed, as to lead to a beautiful and harmonious system 
in the end ? How came it to be neither too fluid nor too tenacious, 
to contract neither too quickly nor too slowly, for the successive 
formation of the several planetary bodies'! How came that sub- 
stance, which at one time was a luminous vapour, to be at a subse- 
quent period, solids and fluids of many various kinds? What but 
design and intelligence prepared and tempered this previously 
existing element, so that it should by its natural changes produce 
such an orderly system? 

And if in this way we suppose a planet to be produced, what sort 
of a body would it be 1 — something, it may be presumed, resembling 
a large meteoric stone. How comes this mass to be covered with 
motion and organization, with life and happiness? What primitive 
cause stocked it with plants and animals, and produced all the vvon- 
derfu and subtle contrivances which we find in their structure, all 
the wide and profound mutual dependences which we trace in their 
ec< nomy ? Was man, with his thought and feeling, his powers 
and hopes, his will and conscience, also produced as an ultimate 
result of the condensation of the solar atmosphere? Except we 
allow a prior purpose and intelligence presiding over thjs material 
"primitive cause," how irreconcilable is it with the evidence which 
crowds in upon us on every side ! 

3. In the next place, we may observe concerning this hypothesis, 
that it carries us back to the beginning of the present system of 
things; but that it is impossible for our reason to stop at the point 
thus presented to it. The sun, the earth, the planets, the moons 
were brought into their present order out of a previous state, and, 
as is supposed in the theory, by the natural operation of laws. But 
how came that previous state to exist? We are compelled to sup- 
pose that it, in like manner, was educed from a still prior state of 
things; and this, again, must have been the result of a condition 
prior still. Nor is it possible for us to find, in the tenets of the 
nebular hypothesis, any resting-place or satisfaction for the mind. 
The same reasoning faculty, which seeks for the origin of the pre- 
sent system of things, and is capable of assenting to, or dissenting 
from the hypothesis propounded by Laplace as an answer to this 
inquiry, is necessarily led to seek, in the same manner, for the 



THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 19 

origin of any previous system of things, out of which the present 
may appear to have grow n : and must pursue this train of inquiries 
unremittingly, so long as the answer which it receives describes a 
mere assemblage of matter and motion ; since ii would be to contra- 
dict the laws of matter and the nature of motion, to suppose such 
an assemblage to be theirs* condition. 

The reflection just stated, may be illustrated by the further con- 
sideration of the Nebular Hypothesis. This opinion refers us, for 
the origin of the solar system, to a sun surrounded with an atmo- 
sphere of enormously elevated temperature, revolving and cooling. 
But as we ascend to a still earlier period, what state of things are 
we to suppose? — a still higher temperature, a still more diffused 
atmosphere. Laplace conceives that, in its primitive state, the sun 
consisted in a diffused luminosity so as to resemble those nebulas 
among the fixed stars, which are seen by the aid of the telescope, 
and which exhibit a nucleus, more or less brilliant, surrounded by 
a cloudy brightness. "This anterior state was itself preceded by 
other states, in which the nebulous matter was more and more 
diffuse, the nucleus being less and less luminous. We arrive," 
Laplace says, " in this manner, at a nebulosity so diffuse that its 
existence could scarcely be suspected." 

" Such is," he adds, " in fact, the first state of the nebulae which 
Herschel carefully observed by means of his powerful telescopes. 
He traced the progress of condensation, not indeed on one nebula, 
for this progress can only become perceptible to us in the course of 
centuries; but in the assemblage of nebulae; much in the same 
manner as in a large forest we may trace the growth of trees among 
the examples of different ages which stand side by side. He saw 
in the first place the nebulous matter dispersed in patches, in the 
different parts of the sky. He saw in some of these patches this 
matter feebly condensed round one or more faint nuclei. In other 
nebulas, these nuclei were brighter in proportion to the surrounding 
nebulosity ; when by a further condensation the atmosphere of each 
nucleus becomes separate from the others, the result is multiple 
nebulous stars, formed by brilliant nuclei very near each other, and 
each surrounded by an atmosphere: sometimes the nebulous matter 
condensing in a uniform manner has produced nebulous systems 
which are called planetary. Finally, a still greater degree of con- 
densation transforms all these nebulous systems into stars. The 
nebulas, classed according to this philosophical view, indicate with 
extreme probability their future transformation into stars, and the 
anterior nebulous condition of the stais which now exist." 

It appears then that the highest point to which this series of con- 
jectures can conduct us, is M an extremely diffused nebulosity," 
attended, we may suppose, by a far higher degree of heat, than that 
which, at a later period of the hypothetical process, keeps all the 
materials of our earth and planets in a state of vapour. Now is it 
not impossible to avoid asking, whence was this light, this heat, 
this diffusion? How came the laws which such a state implies, to 
be already in existence? Whether light and heat produce their 



20 ASTRONOMY. 

effects by means of fluid vehicles or otherwise, they have complex 
and varied laws which indicate the existence of some subtle 
machinery for their action. When and how was this machinery 
constructed ] Whence too that enormous expansive power which 
the nebulous matter is supposed to possess ] And if, as would seem 
to be supposed in this doctrine, all the material ingredients of the 
earth existed in this diffuse nebulosity, either in the state of vapour, 
or in some state of still greater expansion, whence were they and 
their properties ] how came there to be of each simple substance 
which now enters into the composition of the universe, just so much 
and no more? Do we not, far more than ever, require an origin of 
this origin] an explanation of this explanation] Whatever may 
be the merits of the opinion as a physical hypothesis, with which 
we do not here meddle, can it for a moment prevent our looking 
beyond the hypothesis, to a First Cause, an Intelligent Author, an 
origin proceeding from free volition, not from material necessity ] 

But again : let us ascend to the highest point or the hypothetical 
progression : let us suppose the nebulosity diffused throughout all 
space, so that its course of running into patches is not yet begun. 
How are we to suppose it distributed] Is it equably diffused in 
every part] clearly not; for if it were, what should cause it to 
gather into masses, so various in size, form and arrangement] The 
separation of the nebulous matter into distinct nebulae implies 
necessarily some original inequality of distribution ; some deter- 
mining circumstances in its primitive condition. Whence were 
these circumstances 1 this inequality ] we are still compelled to seek 
some ulterior agency and power. 

Why must the primeval condition be one of change at all ] Why 
should not the nebulous matter be equably diffused throughout 
space, and continue for ever in its state of equable diffusion, as it 
must do, from the absence of all cause to determine the time and 
manner of its separation] why should this nebulous matter grow 
cooler and cooler ] why should it not retain for ever the same degree 
of heat, whatever heat be ] If heat be a fluid, if to cool be to part 
with its fluid, as many philosophers suppose, what becomes of the 
fluid heat of the nebulous matter, as the matter cools down] Into 
what unoccupied region does it rind its way] 

Innumerable questions of the same kind might be asked, and the 
conclusion to be drawn is, that every new physical theory which 
we include in our view of the universe, involves us in new diffi- 
culties and perplexities, if we try to erect it into an ultimate and 
final account of the existence and arrangement of the world in which 
we live. With the evidence of such theories, considered as scien- 
tific generalizations of ascertained facts, with their claims to a place 
in our natural philosophy, we have here nothing to do. But if they 
are put forwards as a disclosure of the ultimate cause of that which 
occurs, and as superseding the necessity of looking further or 
higher ; if they claim a place in our Natural Theology, as well as 
our Natural Philosophy; we conceive that their pretensions will 
not bear a moment's examination. 



RECOGNITION OF FINAL CAUSES IN PHYSIOLOGY. 21 

Leaving - then to other persons and to future ages to decide upon 
the scientific merits of the nebular hypothesis, we conceive that 
the final fate of this opinion cannot, in sound reason, affect at all 
the view which we have been endeavouring to illustrate; — the 
view of the universe as the work of a wise and good Creator. Let 
it be supposed that the point to which this hypothesis leads us is 
the ultimate point of physical science; that the farthest glimpse 
we can obtain of the material universe by our natural faculties, 
shows it to us occupied by a boundless abyss of luminous matter; 
still we ask, hojv space came to be thus occupied, how matter 
came to be thus luminous'? If we establish by physical proofs, 
that the first fact which can be traced in the history of the world 
is that "there was light;" we shall still be led, even by our natural 
reason, to suppose that before this could occur, "God said, Let there 
be light." 



PHYSIOLOGY. 

RECOGNITION OF FINAL CAUSES IN PHYSIOLOGY. 

* There is one idea which the researches of the physiologist and 
the anatomist so constantly force upon him, that he cannot help as- 
suming it as one of the guides of his speculations; I mean, the idea 
of a purpose, or, as it is called in Aristotelian phrase, ajinal cause, 
in the arrangements of the animal frame. It is impossible to doubt 
that the motive nerves run along the limbs, in order that they may 
convey to the muscles the impulses of the will ; and that the 
muscles are attached to the bones, in order that they may move 
and support them. This conviction prevails so steadily among 
anatomists, that even when the use of any part is altogether un- 
known, it is still taken for granted that it has some use. The de- 
velopement of this conviction, — of a purpose in the parts of animals, 
— of a function to which each portion of the organization is sub- 
servient, — contributed greatly to the progress of physiology; for it 
constantly urged men forwards in their researches respecting each 
organ, till some definite view of its purpose was obtained. The 
assumption of hypothetical final causes in physics may have been, 
as Bacon asserts it to have been, prejudicial to science; but the 
assumption of unknown final causes in physiology, has given rise 
to the science. The two branches of speculation, Physics and 
Physiology, were equally led, by every new phenomenon, to ask 
their question, " Why? Cut, in the former case, " why" meant 
44 through what cause?" in the latter, "for what end?" And 
(bough it may be possible to introduce into physiology the doctrine 
of efficient causes, such a step can never obliterate the obligations 
which the science owes to the pervading conception of a purpose 
contained in all organization. 

* History of the Inductive Sciences. Book xvii. Chap. i. Sect. 2. 



22 PHYSIOLOGY. 

This conception makes its appearance very early. Indeed, with- 
out any special study of our structure, the thought, that we are 
fearfully aud wonderfully made, forces itself upon men, with a 
mysterious impressi veness, as a suggestion of our Maker. In this 
bearing, the thought is developed to a considerable extent in the 
well-known passage in Xenophon's Conversations of Socrates. Nor 
did it ever lose its hold on sober-minded and instructed men. The 
Epicureans, indeed, held that the eye was not made for seeing, nor 
the ear for hearing ; and Asclepiades, whom we have already men- 
tioned as an impudent pretender, adopted this wiy dogma. Such 
assertions required no labour. " It is easy," says Galen, " for 
people like Asclepiades, when they come to any difficulty, to say 
that nature has worked to no purpose." The great anatomist him- 
self pursues his subject in a very different temper. In a well- 
known passage, he breaks out into an enthusiastic scorn of the 
folly of the atheistical notions. " Try," he says, " if you can ima- 
gine a shoe made with half the skill which appears in the skin of 
the foot." Some one had spoken of a structure of the human body 
which he would have preferred to that which it now has. " See," 
Galen exclaims, after pointing out the absurdity of the imaginary 
scheme, "see what brutishness there is in this wish. But if I 
were to spend more words on such cattle, reasonable men might 
blame me for desecrating my work, which I regard as a religious 
hymn in honour of the Creator." 

THE PLANS OF ANIMAL FORMS. 

*Animals were divided by Lamarck into vertebrate and inverte- 
brate; and the general analogies of all vertebrate animals are 
easily made manifest. But with regard to other animals, the point 
is far from clear. Cuvier was the first to give a really philoso- 
phical view of the animal world in reference to the plan on which 
each animal is constructed. There are,f he says, four such plans ; 
— four forms on which animals appear to have been modelled ; and 
of which the ulterior divisions, with whatever titles naturalists 
have decorated them, are only very slight modifications, founded 
on the developement or addition of some parts which do not produce 
any essential change in the plan. 

The four great branches of the animal world are the vertebrata, 
mollusca, articulata, radiata ; and the differences of these are so 
important that a slight explanation of them may be permitted. 

The vertebrata are those animals which (as man and other suck- 
lers, birds, fishes, lizards, frogs, serpents,) have a back-bone and a 
skull with lateral appendages, within which the viscera are in- 
cluded, and to which the muscles are attached. 

The mollusca, or soft animals, have no bony skeleton ; the 
muscles are attached to the skin, which often includes stony plates 

* History of the Inductive Sciences. Book xvii. Chap. vii. Sect. 2, 3. 
t Regne Animal, p. 57. 



PLANS OF ANIMAL FORMS. 23 

called shell?; such molluscs are shell-fish, others are cuttle-fish, 
and many pulpy sea-animals. 

The arliculata consist of Crustacea, (lobsters, &c.,) insects, 
spiders, and annulose worms, which, like the other classes of this 
branch, consist of a head and a number of successive portions of 
the body jointed together, whence the name. 

Finally, the radiata include the animals known under the name 
of zoophytes. In the preceding three branches, the organs of 
motion and of sense were distributed symmetrically on the two 
sides of an axis, so that the animal has a right and a left side. In 
the radiata the similar members radiate from the axis in a circular 
manner, like the petals of a regular flower. 

The whole value of such a classification cannot be understood 
without explaining its use in enabling us to give general descrip- 
tions, and general laws of the animal functions, of the classes 
which it includes; but in the present part of our work our business 
is to exhibit it as an exemplification of the reduction of animals to 
laws of symmetry. The bipartite symmetry of the form of verte- 
brate and articulate animals is obvious; and the reduction of the 
various forms of such animals to a common type has been effected, 
by attention to their anatomy, in a manner which has satisfied 
those who have best studied the subject. The molluscs, especially 
those in which the head disappears, as oysters, or those which are 
rolled into a spiral, as snails, have a less obvious symmetry, but 
here also we can apply certain general types. And the symmetry 
of the radiated zoophytes is of a nature quite different from all the 
rest, and approaching, as we have suggested, to the kind of sym- 
metry found in plants. Some naturalists have doubted whether* 
these zoophytes are not referrible to two types (acrita or polypes, 
and true radiata), rather than to one. 

Supposing this great step in Zoology, of which we have given an 
account, — the reduction of all animals to four types or plans, — to be 
quite secure, we are then led to ask whether any further advance 
is possible; — whether several of these types can be referred to one 
common form by any wider effort of generalization. On this ques- 
tion there has been a considerable difference of opinion. Geoftroy 
Saint-Hilaire,f who had previously endeavoured to show that all 
vertebrate animals were constructed so exactly upon the same plan 
as to preserve the strictest analogy of parts in respect to their oste- 
ology, thought to extend this unity of plan by demonstrating, that 
the hard parts of crustaces and insects are still only modifications 
of the skeleton of higher animals, and that therefore the type of 
vertebrata must be made to include them also : — the segments of 
the articulata are held to be strictly analogous to the vertebra} of 
the higher animals, and thus the former live within their vertebral 
column in the same manner as the latter live without it. Attempts 
have even been made to reduce molluscous and vertebrate animals 
to a community of type, as we shall see shortly. 

* Brit. Assoc. Rep. iv. 227. t Mr. Jenyns, ibid, iv, 150, 



24 PHYSIOLOGY. 

Another application of the principle, according to which creatures 
the most different are developements of the same original type, may 
be discerned* in the doctrine, that the embryo of the higher forms 
of animal life passes by gradations through those forms which are 
permanent in inferior animals. Thus, according to this view, the 
human foetus assumes successively, the plan of the zoophyte, the 
w T orrn, the fish, the turtle, the bird, the beast. But it has been well 
observed, that " in theseanalogies we look in vain for the precision 
which can alone support the inference that has been deduced;"! 
and that at each step, the higher embryo and the lower animal 
which it is supposed to resemble, differ in having each different or- 
gans suited to their respective destinations. 

Cuvierf never assented to this view, nor to the attempts to refer 
the different divisions of his system to a common type. " He could 
not admit," says his biographer, " that the lungs or gills of the ver- 
tebrates are in the same connexion as the branchiae of molluscs and 
crustaces, which in the one are situated at the base of the feet, or 
fixed on the feet themselves, and in the other often on the back or 
about the arms. He did not admit the analogy between the skele- 
ton of the vertebrates and the skin of the articulates; he could not 
believe that the tenia and the sepia were constructed on the same 
plan; that there was a similarity of composition between the bird 
and the echinus, the whale and the snail; in spite of the skill with 
which some persons sought gradually to efface their discrepancies." 

Whether it may be possible to establish, among the four great 
divisions of the "Animal Kingdom," some analogies of a higher 
order than those which prevail within each division, I do not pre- 
tend to conjecture. If this can be done, it is clear that it must be 
bv comparing the tvpes of these divisions under their most general 
forms: and Thus Cuvier's arrangement, so far as it is itself rightly 
founded on the unity of composition of each branch, is the surest 
step to the discovery of a unity pervading and uniting these 
branches. But though those who generalize surely, and those who 
generalize rapidly, may travel in the same direction, they soon 
separate so widely, that* they appear to move from each other. The 
partisans of a universal "unity of composition" of animals, accused 
Cuvier of being too inert in following the progress of physiological 
and zoological Science. Borrowing their illustration from the poli- 
tical parties of the times, they asserted that he belonged to the 
science of the resistance, not to the science of the movement. Such 
a charge is highly honourable to him; for no one acquainted with 
the history of zoology can doubt that he had a great share in the 
impulse by which the M movement" was occasioned ; or that he 
himself made a large advance with it; and it was because he was 
so poised by the vast mass of his knowledge, so temperate in his 
love of doubtful generalizations, that he was not swept on in the 
wilder part of the stream. To such a charge, moderate reformers, 

* Dr. Clark, Brit. Assoc. Report, iv. 113. f Dr. Clark, p. 114. 

t Laurillard, Elog. de Cuvier, p. 66. 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 25 

who appreciate the value of the good which exists, though they try 
to make it better, and who know the knowledge, tboughtfulness, 
and caution, which are needful in such a task, are naturally ex- 
posed. For us, who can only decide on such a subject by the gene- 
ral analogies of the history of science, it may suffice to say, that it 
appears doubtful whether the fundamental conceptions of affinity, 
analogy, transition, and developement, have yet been fixed in the 
minds of physiologists with sufficient firmness and clearness, or 
unfolded with sufficient consistency and generality, to make it likely 
that any great additional step of this kind can for some time be made. 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES IN PHYSIOLOGY. 

Doctrine of Unity of Plan, — We have repeatedly seen, in the 
course of our historical view of physiology, that those who have 
studied the structure of animals and plants, have had a conviction 
forced upon them, that the organs are constructed and combined in 
subservience to the life and functions of the whole. The parts have 
a purpose, as well as a law ; — we can trace final causes, as well as 
laws of causation. This principle is peculiar to physiology ; and it 
might naturally be expected that, in the progress of the science, it 
would come under special consideration. This accordingly has 
happened ; and the principle has been drawn into a prominent posi- 
tion by the struggle of two antagonist schools of physiologists. On 
the one hand, it has been maintained that this doctrine of final 
causes is altogether unphilosophical, and requires to be replaced by 
a more comprehensive and profound principle: on the other hand, 
it is asserted that the doctrine is not only true, but that, in our own 
time, it has been fixed and developed so as to become the instru- 
ment of some of the most important discoveries which have been 
made. Of the views of these two schools we must endeavour to 
give some account. 

The disciples of the former of the two schools express their tenets 
by the phrases unity of plan, unity of composition ; and the more 
detailed developement of these doctrines has been termed the Theory 
of Analogues, by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who claims this theory as 
his own creation. According to this theory, the structure and func- 
tions of animals are to be studied by the guide of their analogy 
only ; our attention is to be turned, nut to the fitness of the organi- 
zation for any end of life or action, but to its resemblance to other 
organizations by which it is gradually derived from the original 
type. 

According to the rival view of this subject, we must not assume, 
and cannot establish, that the plan of all animals is the same, or 
their composition similar. The existence of a single and universal 
system of analogies in the construction of all animals is entirely 
unproved, and therefore cannot be made our guide in the study of 
their properties. On the other hand, the plan of the animal, the 

3 



26 PHYSIOLOGY. 

purpose of its organization in the support of its life, the necessity of 
the functions to its existence, are truths which are irresistibly ap- 
parent, and which may therefore be safely taken as the bases of our 
reasonings. This view has been put forwards as the doctrine of 
the conditions of existence : it may also be described as the princi- 
ple of a purpose in organization ; the structure being considered 
as having the function for its end. We must say a few words on 
each of these views. 

It had been pointed out by Cuvier, as we have seen in the last 
chapter, that the animal kingdom may be divided into four great 
branches ; in each of which the plan of the animal is different, 
namely, vertebrata, articulata, mollusea, radiata. Now the ques- 
tion naturally occurs, is there really no resemblance of construction 
in these different classes ] It was maintained by some, that there 
is such a resemblance. In 1820,* M. Audouin, a young naturalist 
of Paris, endeavoured to fill up the chasm which separates insects 
from other animals; and by examining carefully the portions which 
compose the solid frame-work of insects, and following them through 
their various transformations in different classes, he conceived that 
he found relations of position and function, and often of number and 
form, which might be compared with the relations of the parts of 
the skeleton in vertebrate animals. He thought that the first seg- 
ment of an insect, the head,f represents one of the three vertebrae 
which, according to Spix and others, compose the vertebrate head : 
the second segment of the insects, (the prothorax of Audouin,) is, 
according to M. GeofTroy, the second vertebra of the head of the 
vertebrata, and so on. Upon this speculation CuvierJ does not give 
any decided opinion; observing only, that even if false, it leads to 
active thought and useful research. 

But when an attempt was further made to identify the plan of 
another branch of the animal world, the mollusea, with that of the 
vertebrata, the radical opposition between such views and those of 
Cuvier, broke out into an animated controversy. 

Two French anatomists, MM. Laurencetand Meyranx, presented 
to the Academy of Sciences, in 1830, a Memoir containing their 
views on the organization of molluscous animals ; and on the sepia 
or cuttle-fish in particular, as one of the most complete examples of 
such animals. These creatures, indeed, though thus placed in the 
same division with shell-fish of the most defective organization and 
obscure structure, are far from being scantily organized. They 
have a brain, \ often eyes, and these, in the animals of this class, 
{cephalopoda) are more complicated than in any vertebrates ;|| they 
have sometimes ears, salivary glands, multiple stomachs, a consi- 
derable liver, a bile, a complete double circulation provided with 
auricles and ventricles ; in short, their vital activity is vigorous, 
and their senses are distinct. 

* Cuv. Hist. Sc. Nat. iii. 422. t Ibid. 437. I Ibid. 441. 
§ Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire denies this. Principes de Phil. Zoologique 
discutes en 1830, p. 68. || Ibid. p. 55. 



USE OP FINAL CAUSES. 27 

But still, though this organization, in the abundance and diversity 
of its parts, approaches that of vertebrate animals, it had not been 
considered as composed in the same manner, or arranged in the 
same order. Cuvier had always maintained that the plan of mol- 
luscs is not a continuation of the plan of vertebrates. 

MM. Laurcncet and Meyranx, on the contrary, conceived that 
the sepia might be reduced to the type of a vertebrate creature, by 
considering* the back-bone of the latter bent double backwards, so 
as to bring the root of the tail to the nape of the neck ; the parts 
thus brought into contact being supposed to coalesce. By this 
mode of conception, these anatomists held that the viscera were 
placed in the same connexion as in the vertebrate type, and the 
functions exercised in an analogous manner. 

To decide on the reality of the analogy thus asserted, clearly be- 
longed to the jurisdiction of the most eminent anatomists and phy- 
siologists. The Memoir was committed to GeofFroy Saint-Hilaire 
and Latreille, two eminent zoologists, in order to be reported on. 
Their report was extremely favourable ; and went almost to the 
length of adopting the views of the authors. 

Cuvier expressed some dissatisfaction with this report on its being 
read ;* and a short time afterwards,! represented GeofFroy Saint- 
Hilaire as having asserted that the new views of Laurencet and 
Meyranx refuted completely the notion of the great interval which 
exists between molluscous and vertebrate animals. Geoffroy pro- 
tested against such an interpretation of his expressions; but it soon 
appeared, by the controversial character which the discussions on 
this and several other subjects assumed, that a real opposition of 
opinions was in action. 

Without attempting to explain the exact views of GeofFroy, (we 
may, perhaps, venture to say that they are hardly yet generally 
understood with sufficient distinctness to justify the mere historian 
of science in attempting such an explanation,) their general ten- 
dency may be sufficiently collected from what has been said ; and 
from the phrases in which his views are conveyed. } The principle 
of connexions, the elective affinities of organic elements, theequili- 
brization of organs ; — such are the designations of the leading 
doctrines which are unfolded in the preliminary discourse of his 
Anatomical Philosophy. Elective affinities of organic elements are 
the forces by which the vital structures and varied forms of living 
things are produced ; and the principles of connexion and equili- 
brium of these forces in the various parts of the organization, pre- 
scribe limits and conditions to the variety and developement of such 
forms. 

The character and tendency of this philosophy will be, I think, 
much more clear, if we consider what it excludes and denies. It 
rejects altogether all conception of a plan and purposes in the 
organs of animals, as a principle which has determined their forms, 
or can be of use in directing our reasonings, " I take care," says 

* Phil. Zool. p. 6. 1 Ibid. p. 50. id. p. 



28 PHYSIOLOGY. 

Geoffroy,* " not to ascribe to God any intention." And when Cuvier 
speaks of the combination of organs in such order that they may 
be in consistence with the part which the animal has to play in 
nature; his rival rejoins,t " I know nothing of animals which have 
to play a part in nature." Such a notion is, he holds, unphiloso- 
phical and dangerous. It is an abuse of final causes which makes 
the cause to be engendered by the effect. And to illustrate still 
further his own view, he says, "I have read concerning fishes, that 
because they Jive in a medium which resists more than air, their 
motive forces are calculated so as to give them the power of pro- 
gression under those circumstances. By this mode of reasoning, 
you would say of a man who makes use of crutches, that he was 
originally destined to the misfortune of having a leg paralyzed or 
amputated." 

How far this doctrine of unity in the plan in animals is admis- 
sible or probable in physiology when kept within proper limits, that 
is, when not put in opposition to the doctrine of a purpose involved 
in the plan of animals, I do not pretend even to conjecture. The 
question is one which appears to be at present deeply occupying 
the minds of the most learned and profound physiologists; and 
such persons alone, adding to their knowledge and zeal, judicial 
sagacity and impartiality, can tell us what is the general tendency 
of the best researches on this subject. J But when the anatomist 
expresses such opinions, and defends them by such illustrations as 
those which I have just quoted, \ we perceive that he quits the 
entrenchments of his superior science, in which he might have 
remained unassailable so long as the question was a professional 
one; and the discussion is open to those who possess no peculiar 
knowledge of anatomy. We shall, therefore, venture to say a few 
words upon it. 

Estimate of this Doctrine. — It has been so often repeated, and 
so generally allowed in modern times, that iinal causes ought not 
to be made our guides in natural philosophy, that a prejudice has 
been established against the introduction of any views to which 
this designation can be applied, into physical speculations. Yet, in 
fact, the assumption of an end or purpose in the structure of 
organized beings, appears to be an intellectual habit which no 
efforts can cast off. It has prevailed from the earliest to the latest 

* " Je me garde de preter a Dieu aucune intention." Phil. Zool. p, 10. 

t " Je ne connais point d'animal qui doive jouer un role dans la 
nature," p. 65. 

I So far as this doctrine is generally accepted among the best physio- 
logists, we cannot doubt the propriety of Meckel's remarks, (Compara- 
rative Anatomy, 1821, Pref. p. xi.) that it cannot be truly asserted either 
to be new, or to be peculiarly due to Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. 

§ It is hardly worth while answering such illustrations, but I may re- 
mark, that the one quoted above, irrelevant and unbecoming as it is, tells 
altogether against its author. The fact that the wooden leg is of the 
same length as the other, proves, and would satisfy the most incredulous 
man, that it was intended for walking. 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 29 

ages of zoological research ; appears to be fastened upon us alike 
by our ignorance and our knowledge; and has been formally ac- 
cepted by so many great anatomists, that we cannot feel any 
scruple in believing the rejection of it to be a superstition of a 
false philosophy, and a result of the exaggeration of other principles 
which are supposed capable of superseding its use. And the doc- 
trine of unity of plan of all animals, and the other principles asso- 
ciated with this doctrine, so far as they exclude the conviction of 
an intelligible scheme and a discoverable end, in the organization 
of animals, appear to be utterly erroneous. I will offer a few 
reasons for an opinion which may appear presumptuous in a writer 
who has only a general knowledge of the subject. 

1. In the first place, it appears to me that the argumentation on 
the case in question, the sepia, does by no means turn out to the ad- 
vantage of the new hypothesis. The arguments in support of the 
hypothetical view of the structure of this mollusc were, that by 
this view the relative position of the parts was explained, and con- 
formations which had appeared altogether anomalous, were reduced 
to rule; for example, the beak, which had been supposed to be in a 
position the reverse of all other beaks, was shown, by the assumed 
posture, to have its upper mandible longer than the lower, and thus 
to be regularly placed. " But," says Cuvier,* " supposing the pos- 
ture, in order that the side on which the funnel of the sepia is 
folded should be the back of the animal, considered as similar to a 
vertebrate, the brain with regard to the beak, and the oesophagus 
with regard to the liver, should have positions corresponding to 
those in vertebrates ; but the positions of these organs are exactly 
contrary to hypothesis. How, then, can you say," he asks, " that 
the cephalopods and vertebrates have identity of composition, unity 
of composition, without using words in a sense entirely different 
from their common meaning]" 

This argument appears to be exactly of the kind on which the 
value of the hypothesis must depend. f It is, therefore, interesting 
to see the reply made to it by the theorist. It is this: "I admit 
the facts here stated, but I deny that they lead to the notion of a 
different sort of animal composition. Molluscous animals had been 
placed too high in the zoological scale; but if they are only the 
embryos of its lower stages, if they are only beings in which far 
fewer organs come into play, it does not follow that the organs 

* G. S. H. Phil. Zool, p. 70. 

t I do not dwell on other arguments which were employed. It was 
given as a circumstance suggesting the supposed posture of the type, 
that in this way the back was coloured, and the belly was white. On 
this Cuvier observes, (Phil. Zool. p. 39, 68.) " I must say, that I do not 
know any naturalist so ignorant as to suppose that the back is deter- 
mined by its dark colour, or even by its position when the animal is in 
motion ; they all know that the badger has a black belly and a white 
back ; that an infinity of other animals, especially among insects, are in 
the same case ; and that many fishes swim on their side, or with their 
belly upwards." 

- 3* 



30 PHYSIOLOGY. 

are destitute of the relations which the power of successive 
generations may demand. The organ A will be in an unusual 
relation with the organ C, if B has not been produced ; — if a 
stoppage of the developement has fallen upon this latter organ, 
and has thus prevented its production. And thus," he says, " we 
see how we may have different arrangements, and diverse construc- 
tions as they appear to the eye." 

It seems to me that such a concession as this entirely destroys 
the theory which it attempts to defend ; for what arrangement does 
the principle of unity of composition exclude, if it admits unusual, 
that is, various arrangements of some organs, accompanied by the 
total absence of others'? Or how does this differ from Cuvier's 
mode of stating the conclusion, except in the introduction of certain 
arbitrary hypotheses of developement and stoppage. ** I reduce the 
facts," Cuvier says, " to their true expression, by saying that cepha- 
lopods have several organs which are common to them and verte- 
brates, and which discharge the same offices ; but that these organs 
are in them differently distributed, and often constructed in a 
different manner; and they are accompanied by several other 
organs which vertebrates have not; while these on the other hand 
have several which are wanting in cephalopods." 

We shall see afterwards the general principles which Cuvier 
himself considered as the best guides in these reasonings. But I 
will first add a few words on the disposition of the school now 
under consideration, to reject all assumption of an end. 

2. That the parts of the bodies of animals are made in order to 
discharge their respective offices, is a conviction which we cannot 
believe to be otherwise than an irremovable principle of the philo- 
sophy of organization, when we see the manner in which it has 
constantly forced itself upon the minds of zoologists and anatomists in 
all ages; not only as an inference, but as a guide whose indications 
they could not help following. I have already noticed expressions 
of this conviction in some of the principal persons who occur in the 
history of physiology, as Galen and Harvey. I might add many 
more, but I will content myself with adducing a contemporary of 
Geoffroy's, whose testimony is the more remarkable, because he 
obviously shares with his countryman in the common prejudice 
against the use of final causes. " I consider," he says, in speaking 
of the provisions for the reproduction of animals,* " with the great 
Bacon, the philosophy of final causes as sterile ; but I have else- 
where acknowledged that it was very difficult for the most cautious 
man never to have recourse to them in his explanations." After 
the survey which we have had to take of the history of physiology, 
we cannot but see that the assumption of final causes in this branch 
of science is so far from being sterile, that it has had a large share 
in every discovery which is included in the existing mass of real 
knowledge. The use of every organ has been discovered by start- 
ing from the assumption that it must have some use. The doctrine 
of the circulation of the blood was, as we have seen, clearly and 

* Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et#& Morale de PEJomme, i. 299. 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 31 

professedly due to the persuasion of a purpose in the circulatory 
apparatus. The study of comparative anatomy is the study of the 
adaptation of animal structures to their purposes. And we shall 
soon have to show that this conception of final causes has, in our 
own times, been so far from barren, that it has, in the hands of 
Cuvicr and others, enabled us to become intimately acquainted with 
vast departments of zoology to which we have no other mode of 
access. It has placed before us in a complete state, animals, of 
which, for thousands of years, only a few fragments have existed, 
and which differ widely from all existing animals; and it has given 
birth, or at least has given the greatest part of its importance and 
interest, to a science which forms one of the brightest parts of the 
modern progress of knowledge. It is, therefore, very far from 
being a vague and empty assertion, when we say that final causes 
are a real and indestructible element in zoological philosophy; and 
that the exclusion of them, as attempted by the school of which 
we speak, is a fundamental and most mischievous error. 

3. Thus, though the physiologist may persuade himself that he 
ought not to refer to final causes, we find that, practically, he cannot 
help it; and that the event shows that his practical habit is right 
and well-founded. But he may still cling to the speculative diffi- 
culties and doubts in which such subjects may be involved by a 
priori considerations. He may say, as Saint-Hi laire does say,* " I 
ascribe no intention to God, for I mistrust the feeble powers of my 
reason. I observe facts merely, and go no further. ] only pretend 
to the character of the historian of what is" "I cannot make 
nature an intelligent being who does nothing in vain, who acts by 
the shortest mode, who does all for the best." 

I am not going- to enter at any length into this subject, which, 
thus considered, is metaphysical and theological, rather than phy- 
siological. If any one maintain, as some have maintained, that no 
manifestation of means apparently used for ends in nature, can 
prove the existence of design in the Author of nature, this is not 
the place to refute such an opinion in its general form. But I 
think it may be worth while to show, that even those who incline 
to such an opinion, still cannot resist the necessity which compels 
men to assume, in organized beings, the existence of an end. 

Among: the philosophers who have referred our conviction of the 
being of God to our moral nature, and have denied the possibility 
of demonstration on mere physical grounds, Kant is perhaps the 
most eminent. Yet he has asserted the reality of such a principle 
of physiology as we are now maintaining in the most emphatic 
monner. Indeed, this assumption of an end makes his very defini- 
tion of an organized being. " An organized product of nature is 
that in which all the parts are mutually ends and means."f And 
this, he says, is a universal and necessary maxim. He adds, u It is 
well known that the anatomisers of plants and animals, in order to 
investigate their structure, and to obtain an insight into the grounds 

* Phil. Zool. p. 10. t Urthcilskraft, p. 296. 



32 PHYSIOLOGY. 

why and to what end such parts, why such a situation and con- 
nexion of the parts, and exactly such an internal form, come before 
them, assume, as indispensably necessary, this maxim, that in such 
a creature nothing is in vain, and proceed upon it in the same way 
in which in general natural philosophy we proceed upon the prin- 
ciple that nothing happens by chance. In fact, they can as little 
free themselves from this teleological principle as from the general 
physical one; for as, on omitting the latter, no experience would 
be possible, so on omitting the former principle, no clue could exist 
for the observation of a kind of natural objects which can be con- 
sidered teleologically under the conception of natural ends." 

Even if the reader should not follow the reasoning of this cele- 
brated philosopher, he will still have no difficulty in seeing that he 
asserts, in the most distinct manner, that which is denied by the 
author whom we have before quoted, the propriety and necessity of 
assuming the existence of an end as our guide in the study of ani- 
mal organization. 

4. It appears to me, therefore, that whether we judge from the 
arguments, the results, the practice of physiologists, their specula- 
tive opinions, or those of the philosophers of a wider field, we are 
led to the same conviction, that in the organized world we may 
and must adopt the belief, that organization exists for its purpose, 
and that the apprehension of the purpose may guide us in seeing 
the meaning of the organization. And I now proceed to show how 
this principle has been brought into additional clearness and use by 
Cuvier. 

In doing this, I may, perhaps, be allowed to make a reflection of 
a kind somewhat different from the preceding remarks, though 
suggested by them. In another work,* I endeavoured to show 
that those who have been discoverers in science have generally 
had minds, the disposition of which was to believe in an intelligent 
Maker of the universe; and that the scientific speculations which 
produced an opposite tendency, were generally those which, though 
they might deal familiarly with known physical truths, and conjec- 
ture boldly with regard to the unknown, did not add to the number 
of solid generalizations. In order to judge whether this remark is 
distinctively applicable in the case now considered, I should have 
to estimate Cuvier in comparison with other physiologists of his 
time, which I do not presume to do. But I may observe, that he is 
allowed by all to have established, on an indestructible basis, many 
of the most important generalizations which zoology now contains; 
and the principal defect which his critics have pointed out, has 
been, that he did not generalize still more widely and boldly. It 
appears, therefore, that he cannot but be placed among the great 
discoverers in the studies which he pursued ; and this being the 
case, those who look with pleasure on the tendency of the thoughts 
of the greatest men to an Intelligence far higher than their own, 

* Bridgewater Treatise, Book iii. Chap. vii. and viii. On Inductive 
Habits of Thought, and On Deductive Habits of Thought. 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 33 

must be gratified to find that he was an example of this tendency; 
and that the acknowledgment of a creative purpose, as well as a 
creative power, not only entered into his belief, but made an indis- 
pensable and prominent part of his philosophy. 

Doctrine of Final Causes. — We have now to describe more in 
detail the doctrine which Cuvier maintained in opposition to such 
opinions as we have been speaking of; and which, in his way of 
applying it, we look upon as a material advance in physiological 
knowledge, and therefore give to it a distinct place in our history. 
"Zoology has," he says,* in the outset of his Regne Animal, "a 
principle of reasoning which is peculiar to it, and which it employs 
with advantage on many occasions : this is the principle of the con- 
ditions of existence, vulgarly called the principle of final causes. 
As nothing can exist if it do not combine all the conditions which 
render its existence possible, the different parts of each being must 
be co-ordinated in such a manner as to render the total being pos- 
sible, not only in itself, but in its relations to those which surround 
it ; and the analysis of these conditions often leads to general laws 
as clearly demonstrated as those which result from calculation or 
from experience." 

This is the enunciation of his leading principle in general terms. 
To our ascribing it to him, some may object, on the ground of its 
being self-evident in its nature,f and having been very anciently 
applied. But to this we reply, that the principle must be considered 
as a real discovery, in the hands of him who first shows how to make 
it an instrument of other discoveries. It is true in other cases as 
well as in this, that some vague apprehension of true general prin- 
ciples, such as a priori considerations can supply, has long preceded 
the knowledge of them as real and verified laws. In such a way it 
was seen, before Newton, that the motions of the planets must 
result from attraction ; and before Dufay and Franklin, it was held 
that electrical actions must result from a fluid. Cuvier's merit con- 
sisted, not in seeing that an animal cannot exist without combining 
all the conditions of its existence; but in perceiving that this truth 
may be taken as a guide in our researches concerning animals; — 
that the mode of their existence may be collected from one part of 
their structure, and then applied to interpret or detect another part. 
He went on the supposition not only that animal forms have some 
plan, some purpose, but that they have an intelligible plan, a dis- 
coverable purpose. He proceeded in his investigations like the 
decipherer of a manuscript, who makes out his alphabet from one 
part of the context, and then applies it to read the rest. The proof 
that his principle was something very different from an identical 
proposition, is to be found in the fact, that it enabled him to under- 
stand and arrange the structures of animals with unprecedented 
clearness and completeness of order ; and to restore the forms of the 
extinct animals which are found in the rocks of the earth, in a 

* Regnc An. p. 6. t Swainson, Study of Nat. Hist. p. 85. 



34 PHYSIOLOGY. 

manner which has been universally assented to as irresistibly con- 
vincing*. These results cannot flow from a trifling or barren prin- 
ciple; and they show us that if we are disposed to form such a 
judgment of Cuvier's doctrine, it must be because we do not fully 
apprehend its import. 

To illustrate this, we need only quote the statement which he 
makes, and the uses to which he applies it. Thus in the Introduc- 
tion to his great work on " Fossil Remains," he says, " Every orga- 
nized being forms an entire system of its own, all the parts of which 
mutually correspond, and concur to produce a certain definite pur- 
pose by reciprocal reaction, or by combining to the same end. Hence 
none of these separate parts can change their forms, without a cor- 
responding change in the other parts of the same animal; and con- 
sequently each of these parts, taken separately, indicates all the 
other parts to which it has belonged. Thus, if the viscera of an 
animal are so organized as only to be fitted for the digestion of 
recent flesh, it is also requisite that the jaws should be so con- 
structed as to fit them for devouring prey ; the claws must be con- 
structed for seizing and tearing it in pieces ; the teeth for cutting 
and dividing its flesh; the entire system of the limbs or organs of 
motion for pursuing and overtaking it; and the organs of sense for 
discovering it at a distance. Nature must also have endowed the 
brain of the animal with instincts sufficient for concealing itself, and 
for laying plans to catch its necessary victims."* By such consi- 
derations he has been able to reconstruct the whole of many animals 
of which parts only were given ; — a positive result, which shows 
both the reality and the value of the truth on which he wrought. 

Another great example, equally showing the immense importance 
of this principle in Cuvier's hands, is the reform which, by means 
of it, he introduced into the classification of animals. Here again 
we may quote the view he himself has givenf of the character of 
his own improvements. In studying the physiology of the natural 
classes of vertebrate animals, he found, he says, " in the respective 
quantity of their respiration, the reason of the quantity of their 
motion, and consequently of the kind of locomotion. This, again, 
furnishes the reason for the forms of their skeletons and muscles; 
and the energy of their senses, and the force of their digestion, are 
in a necessary proportion to the same quantity. Thus a division 
which had till then been established, like that of vegetables, only 
upon observation, was found to rest upon causes appreciable, and 
applicable to other cases." Accordingly, he applied this view to 
invertebrates; — examined the modifications which take place in 
their organs of circulation, respiration, and sensation ; and having 
calculated the necessary results of these modifications, he deduced 
from it a new division of those animals, in which they are arranged 
according to their true relations. 

Such have been some of the results of the principle of the con- 
ditions of existence, as applied by its great assertor. 

* Theory of the Earth, p. 90. t Hist. S. C. Nat i, 293. 



TRANSMUTATION OF SPECIES. 35 

It is clear, indeed, that such a principle could acquire its practical 
value only in the hands of a person intimately acquainted with ana- 
tomical details, with the functions of the organs, and with their 
variety in different animals. It is only by means of such nutriment 
that the embryo truth could be developed into a vast tree of science. 
But it is not the less clear, that Cuvier's immense knowledge and 
great powers of thought led to their results, only by being employed 
under the guidance of this master-principle : and, therefore, we may 
justly consider it as the distinctive feature of his speculations, and 
follow it with a gratified eye, as the thread of gold which runs 
through, connects, and enriches his zoological researches: — gives 
them a deeper interest and a higher value than can belong to any 
view of the organical sciences, in which the very essence of organi- 
zation is kept out of view. 

The real philosopher, who knows that all the kinds of truth are 
intimately connected, and that all the best hopes and encourage- 
ments which are granted to our nature must be consistent with 
truth, will be satisfied and confirmed, rather than surprised and dis- 
turbed, thus to find the natural sciences leading him to the borders 
of a higher region. To him it will appear natural and reasonable, 
that, after journeying so long among the beautiful and orderly laws 
by which the universe is governed, we find ourselves at last 
approaching to a source of order and law, and intellectual beauty : 
— that, after venturing into the region of life and feeling and will, 
we are led to believe the fountain of life and will, not to be itself 
unintelligent and dead, but to be a living mind, a power which aims 
as well as acts. To us this doctrine appears like the natural cadence 
of the tones to which we have so long been listening; and without 
such a final strain our ears would have been left craving and un- 
satisfied. We have been lingering long amid the harmonies of law 
and symmetry, constancy and developement ; and these notes, 
though their music was sweet and deep, must too often have sounded 
to the ear of our moral nature, as vague and unmeaning melodies, 
floating in the air around us, but conveying no definite thought, 
moulded into no intelligible announcement. But one passage which 
we have again and again caught by snatches, though sometimes 
interrupted and lost, at last swells in our ears full, clear, and 
decided; and the religious "Hymn in honour of the Creator," to 
which Galen so gladly lent his voice, and in which the best physi- 
ologists of succeeding times have ever joined, is filled into a richer 
and deeper harmony by the greatest philosophers of these later 
days, and will roll on hereafter, the "perpetual song" of the temple 
of science. 

QUESTION OF THE TRANSMUTATION OF SPECIES. 

* Besides the fortunes of individual plants and animals, of which 
the geologist has traces brought under his notice, there is another 

* Hist. Ind. Sc. Book xviii. Chap. vi. Sect. 2, 3, 4. 



36 PHYSIOLOGY. 

class of question?, of great interest, but of great difficulty ; — the for- 
tunes of each species. In what manner do species which were not, 
begin to be] as geology teaches us that they many times have 
done ; and, as even our own reasonings convince us they must have 
done, at least in the case of the species among which we live. 

We here obviously place before us, as a subject of research, the 
creation of living things; — a subject shrouded in mystery, and not 
to be approached without reverence. But though we may conceive, 
that, on this subject, we are not to seek our belief from science 
alone, we shall rind, it is asserted, within the limits of allowable 
and unavoidable speculation, many curious and important problems 
which may well employ our physiological skill. For example, we 
may ask : — how we are to recognise the species which were origi- 
nally created distinct? — whether the population of the earth at one 
geological epoch could pass to the form which it has at a succeeding 
period,. by the agency of natural causes alone! — and if not, what 
other account we can give of the succession which we find to have 
taken place] 

The most remarkable point in the attempts to answer these and 
the like questions, is the controversy between the advocates and the 
opponents of the doctrine of the transmutation of species. This 
question is, even from its mere physiological import, one of great 
interest; and the interest is much enhanced by our geological re- 
searches, which again bring the quQstion before us in a striking- 
form, and on a gigantic scale. We shall, therefore, briefly state 
the point at issue. 

We see that animals and plants may, by the influence of breeding, 
and of external agents operating upon their constitution, be greatly 
modified, so as to give rise to varieties and races different from what 
before existed. How different, for instances, is one kind and breed 
of dog from another! The question, then, is, whether organized 
beings can, by the mere working of natural causes, pass from the 
type of one species to that of another] whether the wolf may, by 
domestication, become the dog] whether the ourang-Outang may, 
by the power of external circumstances, be brought within the cir- 
cle of the human species] And the dilemma in which we are 
placed is this; — that if species are not thus interchangeable, we 
must suppose the fluctuations of which each species is capable, and 
which are apparently indefinite, to be bounded by rigorous limits; 
whereas, if we allow such a transmutation of species, we abandon 
that belief in the adaptation of the structure of every creature to its 
destined mode of being, which not only most persons would give up 
with repugnance, but which, as we have seen, has constantly and 
irresistibly impressed itself on the minds of the best na-turalists, as 
the true view of the order of the world. 

The question, of the limited or unlimited extent of the modifica- 
tions of animals and plants, has received full and careful considera- 
tion from eminent physiologists: and in their opinions we find, I 
think, an indisputable preponderance to that decision which rejects 
the transmutation of species, and which excepts the former side of 



PROGRESSIVE TENDENCIES. 37 

the dilemma ; namely, that the changes of which each species is 
susceptible, though difficult to define in words, are limited in fact. 
It is extremely interesting and satisfactory thus to receive an an- 
swer in which we can confide, to inquiries seemingly so wide and 
bold as those which this subject involves. I refer to Mr. Lyell, 
Dr. Prichard, Mr. Lawrence r and others, for the history of the dis- 
cussion, and for the grounds of the decision; and I shall quote very 
briefly the main points and conclusions to which the inquiry has 
led.* 

It may be considered, then, as determined by the over-balance of 
physiological authority, that there is a capacity in all species to ac- 
commodate themselves, to a certain extent, to a change of external 
circumstances; this extent varying greatly according to the species. 
There may thus arise changes of appearance or structure, and some 
of these changes are transmissible to the offspring: but the muta- 
tions thus superinduced are governed by constant laws, and confined 
within certain limits. Indefinite divergence from the original type 
is not possible; and the extreme limit of possible variation may 
usually be reached in a short period of time: in short, species have 
a real existence in nature, and a transmutation from one to another 
does not exist. 

Thus, for example, Cuvier rernarks,f that notwithstanding all the 
differences of size, appearance, and habits, which we find in the 
dogs of various races and- countries, and though we have (in the 
Egyptian mummies) skeletons of this animal as it existed three 
thousand years ago, the relation of the bones to each other remains 
essentially the same; and, with all the varieties of their shape and 
size, there are characters which resist all the influences both of 
external nature, of human intercourse, and of time. 

HYPOTHESIS OF PROGRESSIVE TENDENCIES. 

Within certain limits, however, as we have said, external cir- 
cumstances produce changes in the forms of organized beings. The 
causes of change, and the laws and limits of their effects, as they 
obtain in the existing state of the organic creation, are in the 
highest decree interesting. And, as has been already intimated, 
the knowledge thus obtained has been applied with a view to ex- 
plain the origin of the existing population of the world, and the 
succession of its past conditions. But those who have attempted 
such an explanation, have found it necessary to assume certain ad- 
ditional laws, in order to enable themselves to deduce, from the 
tenet of the transmutability of the species of organized beings, such 
a state of things as we see about us, and such a succession of states 
as is evidenced by geological researches. And here, again, we are 
brought to questions of which we must seek the answers from the 
most° profound physiologists. Now referring, as before, to those 
which appear to be the best authorities, it is found that these addi- 

* Lyell, B. ii. c. iv. t Ossem. Foss. Disc. Prel. p. 61. 



39 PHYSIOLOGY. 

tional positive laws are still more inadmissible than the primary 
assumption of indefinite capacity of change. For example, in order 
to account, on this hypothesis, for the seeming adaptation of the en- 
dowments of animals to their wants, it is held that the endowments 
are the result of the wants; — that the swiftness of the antelope, the 
claws and teeth of the lion, the trunk of the elephant, the long neck 
of the giraffe, have been produced by a certain plastic character in 
the constitution of animals, operated upon, for a long course of ages, 
by the attempts which these animals made to attain objects which 
their previous organization did not place within their reach. In 
this way, it is maintained that the most striking attributes of ani- 
mals, those which apparently imply most clearly the providing skill 
of their Creator, have been brought forth by the long-repeated ef- 
forts of the creatures to attain the object of their desires; thus 
animals with the highest endowments have been gradually de- 
veloped from ancestral forms of the most limited organization : thus 
fish, birds, and beasts, have grown from small gelatinous bodies, 
" petits corps gelatineux," possessing some obscure principle of life, 
and the capacity of developement ; and thus man himself, with all 
his intellectual and moral, as well as physical privileges, has been 
derived from some creature of 'the ape or baboon tribe, urged by a 
constant tendency to improve, or at least to alter his condition. 

As we have said, in order to arrive, even hypothetically, at this 
result, it is necessary to assume, besides a mere capacity for change, 
other positivejand active principles, some "of which we may notice. 
Thus, we must have, as the direct productions of nature on this 
hypothesis, certain monads or rough draughts, the primary rudi- 
ments of plants and animals. . y We must have, in these, a constant 
tendency to progressive improvement, to the attainment of higher 
powers and faculties than they possess ; which tendency is again 
perpetually modified and controlled by the force of external cir- 
cumstances. And in order to account for the simultaneous ex- 
istence of animals in every stage of this imaginary progress, we 
must suppose that nature is compelled to be constantly producing 
those elementary beings, from which all animals are successively 
developed. 

I need not stay to point out how extremely arbitrary every part 
of this scheme is ; and how complex its machinery would be, even 
if it did account for the facts. It may be sufficient to observe, 
as others have done,* that the capacity of change, and of being in- 
fluenced by external circumstances, such as we really find it in 
nature, and therefore such as in science we must represent it, is a 
tendency, not to improve, but to deteriorate. When species are 
modified by external causes, they usually degenerate, and do not 
advance. And there is no instance of a species acquiring an en- 
tirely new sense, faculty, or organ, in addition to, or in the place of, 
what it had before. 

Not only, then, is the doctrine of the transmutation of species 

* Lyell, Book iii. Chap. i. p. 413. 



CREATION A3 RELATED TO SCIENCE. 89 

in itself disproved by the best physiological reasonings, but the 
additional assumptions which are requisite, to enable its advocates 
to apply it to the explanation of the geological and other phenomena 
of the earth, are altogether gratuitous and fantastical. 

Such is the judgment to which we are led by the examination of 
the discussions which have taken place on this subject. Yet in 
certain speculations, occasioned by the discovery of the Sivatherium, 
a new fossil animal from the Sub-Himalaya mountains of India, 
M. GeorTroy Saint-Hilaire speaks of the belief in the immutability 
of species as a conviction which is fading away from men's minds. 
He speaks too of the termination of the age of Cuvier, " la cloture 
du siecle de Cuvier," and of the commencement of a better zoolo- 
gical philosophy.* But though he expresses himself with great 
animation, I do not perceive that he adduces, in support of his 
peculiar opinions, any arguments in addition to those which he 
urged during the lifetime of Cuvier. And the readerf may recollect 
that the consideration of that controversy led us to very different 
anticipations from his, respecting the probable future progress of 
physiology. The discovery of the Sivatherium supplies no particle 
of proof to the hypothesis, that the existing species of animals are 
descended from extinct creatures which are specifically distinct : 
and we cannot act more wisely than in listening to the advice of 
that eminent naturalist, M. de Blainville.J " Against this hypo- 
thesis, which up to the present time, I regard as purely gratuitous, 
and likely to turn geologists out of the sound and excellent road in 
which they now are, I willingly raise my voice, with the most 
absolute conviction of being in the right." 



GEOLOGY. 

THE QUESTION OF CREATION AS RELATED TO SCIENCE. 

§The study of geology opens to us the spectacle of many groups 
of species which have, in the course of the earth's history, succeeded 
each other at vast intervals of time; one set of animals and plants 
disappearing, as it would seem, from the face of our planet, and 
others, which did not before exist, becoming the only occupants of 
the globe. And the dilemma then presents itself to us anew : — 
either we must accept the doctrine of the transmutation of species, 
and must suppose that the organized species of one geological epoch 
were transmuted into those of another by some long-continued 
agency of natural causes ; or else, we must believe in many suc- 
cessive acts of creation and extinction of species, out of the common 

* Compte Rendu dc l'Acad. des Sc. 1837, No. 3, p. 81. 

t See p. <28. X Compte Rendu, 1837, No. 5, p. 168. 

§ Hist. Ind. Sc. Book xviii. Chap. vi. Sect. 5. 



40 GEOLOGY. 

course of nature ; acts which, therefore, we may properly call 
miraculous. 

But since we reject the production of new species by means of 
external influence, do we then, it may be asked, accept the other 
side of the dilemma which we have stated ; and admit a series of 
creations of species, by some power beyond that which we trace in 
the ordinary course of nature] 

To this question, the history and analogy of science, I conceive, 
teach us to reply as follows : — All palaetiological sciences, all 
speculations which attempt to ascend from the present to the 
remote past, by the chain of causation, do also, by an inevitable 
consequence, urge us to look for the beginning of the state of 
things which we thus contemplate; but in none of these cases 
have men been able, by the aid of science, to arrive at a beginning 
which is homogeneous with the known course of events. The 
first origin of language, of civilization, of law and government, 
cannot be clearly made out by reasoning and research ; and just as 
little, we may expect, will a knowledge of the origin of the exist- 
ing and extinct species of plants and animals, be the result of phy- 
siological and geological investigation. 

But, though philosophers have never yet demonstrated, and per- 
haps never will be able to demonstrate, what was that primitive 
state of things in the social and material worlds, from which the 
progressive state took its first departure ; they can still, in all the 
lines of research to which we have referred, go very far back ; — 
determine many of the remote circumstances of the past sequence 
of events ; — ascend to a point which, from our position at least, 
seems to be near the origin ; — and exclude many suppositions 
respecting the origin itself. Whether, by the light of reason alone, 
men will ever be able to do more than this, it is difficult to say. It 
is, I think, no irrational opinion, even on grounds of philosophical 
analogy alone, that in all those sciences which look back and seek 
a beginning of things, we may be unable to arrive at a consistent 
and definite belief, without having recourse to other grounds of 
truth, as well as to historical research and scientific reasoning. 
When our thoughts would apprehend steadily the creation of things, 
w T e find that we are obliged to summon up other ideas than those 
which regulate the pursuit of scientific truths; — to call in other 
powers than those to which we refer natural events : it cannot, 
then, be considered as very surprising, if, in this part of our inquiry, 
we are compelled to look for other than the ordinary evidence of 
science. 

Geology, forming one of the palsetiologieai class of sciences, 
which trace back the history of the earth and its inhabitants on 
philosophical grounds, is thus associated with a number of other 
kinds of research, which are concerned about language, law, art, 
and consequently about the internal faculties of man, his thoughts, 
his social habits, his conception of right, his love of beauty. 
Geology being thus brought into the atmosphere of moral and 
mental speculations, it may be expected that her investigations of 



CREATION AS RELATED TO SCIENCE. 41 

the probable past will share an influence common to them ; and 
that she will not be allowed to point to an origin of her own, a 
merely physical beginning- of things; but that, as she approaches 
towards such a goal, she will be led to see that it is the origin of 
many trains of events, the point of convergence of many lines. It 
may be, that instead of being allowed to travel up to this focus of 
being, we are only able to estimate its place and nature, and to 
form of it such a judgment as this ; — that it is not only the source 
of mere vegetable and animal life, but also of rational and social 
life, language and arts, law and order ; in short, of all the pro- 
gressive tendencies by which the highest principles of the intel- 
lectual and moral world have been and are developed, as well as 
of the succession of organic forms, which we find scattered, dead 
or living, over the earth. 

This reflection concerning the natural scientific view of creation, 
it will be observed, has not been sought for from a wish to arrive 
at such conclusions; but it has flowed spontaneously from the 
manner in which we have had to introduce geology into our classi- 
fication of the sciences : and this classification was framed from an 
unbiassed consideration of the general analogies and guiding ideas 
of the various portions of our knowledge. Such remarks as we 
have made may on this account be considered more worthy of 
attention. 

But such a train of thought must be pursued with caution. 
Although it may not be possible to arrive at a right conviction 
respecting the origin of the world, without having recourse to other 
than physical considerations, and to other than geological evidence, 
yet extraneous considerations, and extraneous evidence, respecting 
the nature of the beginning of things, must never be allowed to 
influence our physics or our geology. Our geological dynamics, 
like our astronomical dynamics, may be inadequate to carry us back 
to an origin of that state of things of which it explains the pro- 
gress, but this deficiency must be supplied, not by adding super- 
natural to natural geological dynamics, but by accepting, in their 
proper place, the views supplied by a portion of knowledge of a 
different character and order. If we include in theology the 
speculations to which we have recourse for this purpose, we must 
exclude them from geology. The two sciences may conspire, not 
by having any part in common, but because, though widely diverse 
in their lines, both point to a mysterious and invisible origin of the 
world. 

All that which claims our assent on those higher grounds of 
which theology takes cognizance, must claim such assent as is 
consistent with those grounds ; that is, it must require belief in 
respect of all that bears upon the highest relations of our being, 
those on which depend our duties and our hopes. Doctrines of this 
kind may and must be conveyed and maintained, by means of in- 
formation concerning the past history of man, and his social and 
material, as well as moral and spiritual fortunes. He who believes 
hat a Providence has ruled the affairs of mankind, will also believe 

4* 



42 GEOLOGY. 

that a Providence has governed the material world. But any lan- 
guage in which the narrative of this government of the material 
world can be conveyed, must necessarily be very imperfect and 
inappropriate; being expressed in terms of those ideas which have 
been selected by men, in order to describe the appearances and 
relations of created things as they affect one another. In all cases, 
therefore, where we have to attempt to interpret such a narrative, 
we must feel that we are extremely liable to err ; and most of all, 
when our interpretation refers to those material objects and opera- 
tions which are most foreign to the main purpose of a history of 
providence. If we have to consider a communication containing 
a view of such a government of the world, imparted to us, as we 
may suppose, in order to point out the right direction for our feel- 
ings of trust, and reverence, and hope, towards the Governor of the 
world, we may expect that we shall be in no danger of collecting 
from our authority erroneous notions with regard to the power, and 
wisdom, and goodness of His government ; or with respect to our 
own place, duties, and prospects, and the history of our race, so far 
as our duties and prospects are concerned. But that we should 
rightly understand the detail of all events in the history of man, or 
of the skies, or of the earth, which are narrated for the purpose of 
thus giving a right direction to our minds, is by no means equally 
certain ; and I do not think it would be too much to say, that an 
immunity from perplexity and error, in such matters, is, on general 
grounds, very improbable. It cannot then surprise us to find, that 
parts of such narrations which seem to refer to occurrences like 
those of which astronomers and geologists have attempted to de- 
termine the laws, have given rise to many interpretations, all in- 
consistent with one another, and most of them at variance with the 
best established principles of astronomy and geology. 

It may be urged, that all truths must be consistent with all other 
truths, and that therefore the results of true geology or astronomy 
cannot be irreconcilable with the statements of true theology. 
And this universal consistency of truth with itself must be assented 
to; but it by no means follows that we must be able to obtain a full 
insight into the nature and manner of such a consistency. Such 
an insight would only be possible if we could obtain a clear view 
of that central body of truth, the source of the principles which 
appear in the separate lines of speculation. To expect that we 
should see clearly how the providential government of the world 
is consistent with the unvarying laws by which its motions and 
developernents are regulated, is to expect to understand thoroughly 
the laws of motion, of developement, and of providence ; it is to 
expect that we may ascend from geology and astronomy to the 
creative and legislative centre, from which proceeded earth and 
stars; and then descend again into the moral and spiritual world, 
because its source and centre are the same as those of the material 
creation. It is to say that reason, whether finite or infinite, must 
be consistent with itself; and that, therefore, the finite must be 
able to comprehend the infinite, to travel from any one province of 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 43 

the moral and material universe to any other, to trace their bearing, 
and to connect their boundaries. 

One of the advantages of the study of the history and nature of 
science in which we are now engaged is, that it warns us of the 
hopeless and presumptuous character of such attempts to under- 
stand the government of the world by the aid of science, without 
throwing any discredit upon the reality of our knowledge; — that 
while it shows how solid and certain each science is, so long as it 
refers its own facts to its own ideas, it confines each science within 
its own limits, and condemns it as empty and helpless, when it 
pronounces upon those subjects which are extraneous to it. The 
error of persons who should seek a geological narrative in theolo- 
gical records, would be rather in the search itself than in their 
interpretation of what they might find ; and in like manner the 
error of those who would conclude against a supernatural begin- 
ning, or a providential direction of the world, upon geological or 
physiological reasonings, would be, that they had expected those 
sciences alone to place the origin or the government of the world 
in its proper light. 

Though these observations apply generally to all the palaetiolo- 
gical sciences, they may be permitted here, because they have an 
especial bearing upon some of the difficulties which have embar- 
rassed the progress of geological speculation ; and though such 
difficulties are, I trust, nearly gone by, it is important for us to see 
them in their true bearing. 

From what has been said, it follows that geology and astronomy 
are, of themselves, incapable of giving us any distinct and satis- 
factory account of the origin of the universe, or of its parts. We 
need not wonder, then, at any particular instance of this incapa- 
city ; as for example, that of which we have been speaking, the 
impossibility of accounting by any natural means for the produc- 
tion of all the successive tribes of plants and animals which have 
peopled the world in the various stages of its progress, as geology 
teaches us. That they were, like our own animal and vegetable 
contemporaries, profoundly adapted to the condition in which they 
were placed, we have ample reason to believe; but when we in- 
quire whence they came into this our world, geology is silent. 
The mystery of creation is not within the range of her legitimate 
territory ; she says nothing, but she points upwards. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY. 

THE IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 

*1. By an examination of those notions which enter into all our 
reasonings and judgments on living tilings, it appears that we con- 

* Miiller, Elem., p. 18. 



44 BIOLOGY. 

ceive animal life as a vortex or cycle of moving matter in which 
the form of the vortex determines the motions, and these motions 
again support the form of the vortex: the stationary parts circulate 
the fluids, and the fluids nourish the permanent parts. Each por- 
tion ministers to the others, each depends upon the other. The 
parts make up the whole, but the existence of the whole is essen- 
tial to the preservation of the parts. But parts existing under such 
conditions are organs, and the whole is organized. This is the 
fundamental conception of organization. " Organized beings," 
says the physiologist,* " are composed of a number of essential and 
mutually dependent parts." " An organized product of nature," 
says the great metaphysician,! " is that in which all the parts are 
mutually ends and means." 

2. It will be observed that we do not content ourselves with say- 
ing that in such a whole, all the parts are mutually dependent. 
This might be true even of a mechanical structure; it would be 
easy to imagine a framework in which each part should be neces- 
sary to the support of each of the others; for example, an arch of 
several stones. But in such a structure the parts have no proper- 
ties which they derive from the whole. They are beams or stones 
when separate; they are no more when joined. But the same is 
not the case in an organized whole. The limb of an animal sepa- 
rated from the body, loses the properties of a limb and soon ceases 
to retain even its form. 

3. Nor do we content ourselves with saying that the parts are 
mutually causes and effects. This is the case in machinery. In 
a clock, the pendulum by means of the escapement causes the de- 
scent of the weight, the weight by the same escapement keeps up 
the motion of the pendulum. But things of this kind may happen 
by accident. Stones slide from a rock down the side of a hill and 
cause it to be smooth ; the smoothness of the slope causes stones 
still to slide. Yet no one would call such a slide an organized 
system. The system is organized, when the effects which take 
place among the parts are essential to our conception of the whole ; 
when the whole would not be a whole, nor the parts, parts, except 
these effects were produced ; when the effects not only happen in 
fact, but are included in the idea of the object; when they are not 
only seen, but foreseen ; not only expected, but intended : in short 
when, instead of being causes and effects, they are ends and means, 
as they are termed in the above definition. 

Thus we necessarily include, in our Idea of Organization, the 
notion of an end, a purpose, a design ; or, to use another phrase 
which has been peculiarly appropriated in this case, a Final Cause. 
This idea of a Final Cause is an essential condition in order to the 
pursuing our researches respecting organized bodies. 

4. This Idea of Final Cause is not deduced from the phenomena 
by reasoning, but is assumed as the only condition under which we 
can reason on such subjects at all. We do not deduce the Idea of 

* Kant, Urtheilskrafl, p. 296. t Phil. Ind. Sc. Book ix. Chap. vi. 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSE8. 45 

Space, or Time, or efficient Cause, from the phenomena about us, 
but necessarily look at phenomena as subordinate to these Ideas 
from the beginning' of our reasoning". It is true, our ideas of rela- 
tions of Space, and Time, and Force, may become much more clear 
by our familiarizing ourselves with particular phenomena ; but still, 
the Fundamental Ideas are not generated, but unfolded; not ex- 
tracted from the external world, but evolved from the world within. 
In like manner, in the contemplation of organic structures, we 
consider each part as subservient to some use, and we cannot study 
the structure as organic without such a conception. This notion 
of adaptation, — this Idea of an End, — may become much more 
clear and impressive by seeing it exemplified in particular cases. 
But still, though suggested and evoked by special cases, it is not 
furnished by them. If it be not supplied by the mind itself, it can 
never be logically deduced from the phenomena. It is not a por- 
tion of the facts which we study, but it is a principle which con- 
nects, includes, and renders them intelligible; as our other Funda- 
mental Ideas do the classes of facts to which they respectively 
apply. 

5. This has already been confirmed by reference to fact; in the 
History of Physiology, I have shown that those who studied the 
structure of animals w 7 ere irresistibly led to the conviction that the 
parts of this structure have each its end or purpose ; — that each 
member and organ not merely produces a certain effect or answers 
a certain use, but is so framed as to impress us with the persuasion 
that it was constructed for that use: — that it was intended to pro- 
duce the effect. It was there seen that this persuasion was re- 
peatedly expressed in the most emphatic manner by Galen; — that 
it directed the researches and led to the discoveries of Harvey ; — 
that it has always been dwelt upon as a favourite contemplation, 
and followed as a certain guide, by the best anatomists; and that 
it is inculcated by the physiologists of the profoundest views and 
most extensive knowledge of our own time. All these persons have 
deemed it a most certain and important principle of physiology, that 
in every organized structure, plant or animal, each intelligible part 
h.as its allotted office : — each organ is designed for its appropriate 
function : — that nature, in these cases, produces nothing in vain : 
that, in short, each portion of the whole arrangement has its final 
cause; an end to which it is adapted, and in this end, the reason 
that it is where and what it is. 

6. This notion of Design in organized bodies must, I say, be sup- 
plied by the student of organization out of his own mind : a truth 
which will become clearer if we attend to the most conspicuous and 
acknowledged instances of design. The structure of the eye, in 
which the parts are curiously adjusted so as to produce a distinct 
image on the retina, as in an optical instrument; — the trochlear 
muscle of the eye, in which the tendon passes round a support and 
turns back, like a rope round a pull y ; — the prospective contrivances 
for the preservation of animals, provided long before they are wanted, 
as the milk of the mother, the teeth of the child, the eyes and lungs 



46 BIOLOGY. 

of the foetus: — these arrangements, and innumerable others, call up 
in us a persuasion that Design has entered into the plan of animal 
form and progress. And if we bring in our minds this conception 
of Design, nothing can more fully square with and fit it, than such 
instances as these. But if we did not already possess the Idea of 
Design ; — if we had not had our notion of mechanical contrivance 
awakened by inspection of optical instruments, or pulleys, or in some 
other way ; — if we had never been conscious ourselves of providing 
for the future; — if this were the case, we could not recognise con- 
trivance and prospectiveness in such instances as we have referred to. 
The facts are, indeed, admirably in accordance with these concep- 
tions, when the two are brought together: but the facts and the 
conceptions come together from different quarters — from without 
and from within. 

7. We may further illustrate this point by referring to the rela- 
tions of travellers who tell us that when consummate examples of 
human mechanical contrivance have been set before savages, they 
have appeared incapable of apprehending them as proofs of design. 
This shows that in such cases the Idea of Design had not been de- 
veloped in the minds of the people who were thus unintelligent: 
but it no more proves that such an idea does not naturally and 
necessarily arise, in the progress of men's minds, than the confused 
manner in which the same savages apprehend the relations of space, 
or number, or cause, proves that these ideas do not naturally belong 
to their intellects. All men have these ideas ; and it is because 
they cannot help referring their sensations to such ideas, that they 
apprehend the world as existing in time and space, and as a series 
of causes and effects. It would be very erroneous to say that the 
belief of such truths is obtained by logical reasoning from facts. 
And in like manner we cannot logically deduce design from the 
contemplation of organic structures ; although it is impossible for 
us, when the facts are clearly before us, not to find a reference to 
design operating in our minds. 

8. Again; the evidence of the doctrine of Final Causes as a fun- 
damental principle of Biology may be obscured and weakened in 
some minds by the constant habit of viewing this doctrine with 
suspicion as unphilosophical and at variance with morphology. By 
cherishing such views it is probable that many persons, physiologists 
and others, have gradually brought themselves to suppose that 
many or most of the arrangements which are familiarly adduced as 
instances of design may be accounted for, or explained away ; — that 
there is a certain degree of prejudice and narrowness of comprehen- 
sion in that lively admiration of the adaptation of means to ends 
which common minds derive from the spectacle of organic arrange- 
ments. And yet, even in persons accustomed to these views, the 
strong and natural influence of the Idea of a Final Cause, the spon- 
taneous recognition of the relation of means to an end as the as- 
sumption which makes organic arrangements intelligible, breaks 
forth when we bring before them a new case, with regard to which 
their genuine convictions have not yet been modified by their 



IDEA OP FINAL CAUSES. 47 

intellectual habits. I will offer, as an example which may serve to 
illustrate this, the discoveries recently made with regard to the 
process of suckling of the kangaroo. In the case of this, as of other 
pouched animals, the young animal is removed, while very small 
and imperfectly formed, from the womb to the pouch, in which the 
teats are, and is there placed with its lips against one of the nipples. 
But the young animal taken altogether is not so large as the nipple, 
and is therefore incapable of sucking after the manner of common 
mammals. Here is a difficulty: how is it overcome? — By an ap- 
propriate contrivance : the nipple, which in common mammals is 
not furnished with any muscle, is in the kangaroo provided with a 
powerful extrusory muscle by which the mother can inject the milk 
into the mouth of her offspring. And again; in order to give at- 
tachment to this muscle there is a bone which is not found in ani- 
mals of other kinds. But this mode of solving the problem of suckling 
so small a creature introduces another difficulty. If the milk is 
injected into the mouth of the young one, without any action of its 
own muscles, what is to prevent the fluid entering the windpipe 
and producing suffocation 1 How is this danger avoided 1 — By ano- 
ther appropriate contrivance: there is a funnel in the back of the 
throat by which the air-passage is completely separated from the 
passage for nutriment, and the injected milk passes in a divided 
stream on each side of the larynx to the oesophagus.* And as if to 
show that this apparatus is really formed with a view to the wants 
of the young one, the structure alters in the course of the animal's 
growth ; and the funnel, no longer needed, is modified and disappears. 
With regard to this and similar examples, the remark which I 
would urge is this : — that no one, however prejudiced or unphilo- 
sophical he may in general deem the reference to Final Causes, 
can, at the first impression, help regarding this curious system of 
arrangement as the means to an end. So contemplated, it becomes 
significant, intelligible, admirable: without such a principle, it is 
an unmeaning complexity, a collection of contradictions, producing 
an almost impossible result by a portentous conflict of chances. The 
parts of this apparatus cannot have produced one another; one part 
is in the mother; another part in the young one: without their 
harmony they could not be effective ; but nothing except design 
can operate to make them harmonious. They are intended to work 
together; and we cannot resist the conviction of this intention 
when the facts first come before us. Perhaps there may hereafter 
be physiologists who, tracing the gradual developement of the parts 
of which we have spoken, and the analogies which connect them 
with the structures of other animals, may think that this develope- 
ment, these analogies, account for the conformation we have de- 
scribed ; and may hence think lightly of the explanation derived 
from the reference to Final Causes. Yet surely it is clear, on a 
calm consideration of the subject, that the latter explanation is not 
disturbed by the former ; and that the observer's first impression, 

* Mr. Owen, in Phil. Trans., 1834, p. 348. 



48 BIOLOGY. 

that this is " an irrefragable evidence of creative foresight, 1 '* can 
never be obliterated, however much it may be obscured in the 
minds of those who confuse this view by mixing it with others which 
are utterly heterogeneous to it, and therefore cannot be contra- 
dictory. 

9. I have elsewheref remarked how physiologists, who thus look 
with suspicion and dislike upon the introduction of Final Causes 
into physiology, have still been unable to exclude from their specu- 
lations causes of this kind. Thus Cabanis says,J "I regard with 
the great Bacon, the philosophy of Final Causes as sterile ; but I 
have elsewhere acknowledged that it was very difficult for the 
most cautious man never to have recourse to them in his explana- 
tions." Accordingly, lie says, " The partisans of Final Causes 
nowhere find arguments so strong in favour of their way of looking 
at nature as in the laws which preside and the circumstances of all 
kinds which concur in the reproduction of living races. In no case 
do the means employed appear so clearly relative to the end." 
And it would be easy to find similar acknowledgments, express or 
virtual, in other writers of the same kind. Thus Bichat, after 
noting the difference between the organic sensibility by which the 
organs are made to perform their offices, and the animal sensibility 
of which the nervous centre is the seat, says,§ " No doubt it will 
be asked, why" — that is, as we shall see, for what end — " the 
organs of internal life have received from nature an inferior degree 
of sensibility only, and why they do not transmit to the brain the 
impressions which they receive, while all the acts of the animal 
life imply this transmission'? The reason is simply this, that all 
the phenomena which establish our connexions with surrounding 
objects ought to he, and are in fact, under the influence of the 
will; while all those which serve for the purpose of assimilation 
only, escape, and ought indeed to escape, such influence." The 
reason here assigned is the Final Cause; which, as Bichat justly 
says, we cannot help asking for. 

10. Again ; I may quote from the writer last mentioned another 
remark, which shows that in the organical sciences, and in them 
alone, the Idea of forces as Means acting to an End, is inevitably 
assumed and acknowledged as of supreme authority. In Biology 
alone, observes Bichat,|| have we to contemplate the state of dis- 
ease. " Physiology is to the movements of living bodies, what 
astronomy, dynamics, hydraulics, &c, are to those of inert matter: 
but these latter sciences have no branches which correspond to 
them as pathology corresponds to physiology. For the same reason 
all notion of a medicament is repugnant to the physical sciences. 
A medicament has for its object to bring the properties of the 

* Mr. Owen, in Phil. Trans., 1834, p. 349. 

f Bridgewater Treatise, p. 352. 

X Rapports de Physique et du Moral, i. 299. 

§ Life and Death, (trans.) p. 32. 

H Anatomie Generale, i. liij. 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES.* 49 

system back to their natural type; but the physical properties 
never depart from this type, and have no need to be brought back 
to it: and thus there is nothing in the physical sciences which 
holds the place of therapeutick in physiology. " Or, as we might 
express it otherwise, of inert forces we have no conception of what 
they ought to do, except what they do. The forces of gravity, 
elasticity, affinity, never act in a diseased manner; we never con- 
ceive them as failing in their purpose; for we do not conceive 
them as having- any purpose which is answered by one mode of 
their action rather than another. But with organical forces the 
case is different; they are necessarily conceived as acting for the 
preservation and developement of the system in which they reside. 
If they do not do this, they fail, they are deranged, diseased. They 
have for their object to conform the living being to a certain type ; 
and if they cause or allow it to deviate from this type, their action 
is distorted, morbid, contrary to the ends of nature. And thus this 
conception of organized beings as susceptible of disease, implies 
the recognition of a state of health, and of the organs and the vital 
forces as means for preserving this normal condition. The state of 
health and of perpetual developement is necessarily contemplated as 
the Final Cause of the processes and powers with which the dif- 
ferent parts of plants and animals are endowed. 

11. This idea of a Final Cause is applicable as a fundamental 
and regulative idea to our speculations concerning organized crea- 
tures only. That there is a purpose in many other parts of the 
creation, we find abundant reason to believe from the arrange- 
ments and laws which prevail around us. But this persuasion is 
not to be allowed to regulate and direct our reasonings with re- 
gard to inorganic matter, of which conception the relation of 
means and end forms no essential part. In mere Physics, Final 
Causes, as Bacon has observed, are not to be admitted as a prin- 
ciple of reasoning. But in the organical sciences, the assumption 
of design and purpose in every part of every whole, that is, the 
pervading idea of Final Cause, is the basis of sound reasoning and 
the source of true doctrine. 

12. The Idea of Final Cause, of end, purpose, design, intention, 
is altogether different from the Idea of Cause, as efficient cause, 
which we formerly had to consider ; and on this account the use of 
the word Cause in this phrase has been objected to. If the idea 
be clearly entertained and steadily applied, the word is a question 
of subordinate importance. The term Final Cause has been long 
familiarly used, and appears not likely to lead to confusion. 

13. The consideration of Final Causes, both in physiology and 
in other subjects, has at all times attracted much attention, in con- 
sequence of its bearing upon the belief of an Intelligent Author of 
the Universe. I do not intend, in this place, to pursue the subject 
far in this view : but there is one antithesis of opinion, already 
noticed in speaking of Physiology, on which I will again make a 
few remarks.* 

* See p. 25. 
5 



50 • BIOLOGY. 

It has appeared to some persons that the mere aspect of order 
and symmetry in .the works of nature — the contemplation of com- 
prehensive and consistent law — is sufficient to lead us to the con- 
ception of a design and intelligence producing the order and carry- 
ing into effect the law. Without here attempting to decide whe- 
ther this is true, we may discern, after what has heen said, that 
the conception of design, arrived at in this manner, is altogether 
different from that idea of design which is suggested to us by 
organized bodies, and which we describe as the doctrine of Final 
Causes. The regular form of a crystal, whatever beautiful sym- 
metry it may exhibit, whatever general laws it may exemplify, 
does not prove design in the same manner in which design is 
proved by the provisions for the preservation and growth of the 
seeds of plants, and of the young of animals. The law of universal 
gravitation, however wide and simple, does not impress us with 
the belief of a purpose, as does that propensity by which the two 
sexes of each animal are brought together. If it could be shown 
that trie symmetrical structure of a flower results from laws of the 
same kind as those which determine the regular forms of crystals, 
or the motions of the planets, the discovery might be very striking 
and important, but it would not at all come under our idea of Final 
Cause. 

14. Accordingly there have been, in modern times, two different 
schools of physiologists, the one proceeding upon the idea of Final 
Causes, the other school seeking in the realm of organized bodies 
wide laws and analogies from which that idea is excluded. All the 
great biologists of preceding times, and some of the greatest of 
modern times, have belonged to the former school ; and especially 
Cuvier, who may be considered as the head of it. It was solely by 
the assiduous application of this principle of Final Cause, as he 
himself constantly declared, that he was enabled to make the dis- 
coveries which have rendered his name so illustrious, and which 
contain a far larger portion of important anatomical and biological 
truth than it ever before fell to the lot of one man to contribute to 
the science. 

15. The opinions which have been put in opposition to the prin- 
ciple of Final Causes have, for the most part, been stated vaguely 
and ambiguously. Among the most definite of such principles, is 
that which, in the History of the subject, 1 have termed the Prin- 
ciple of metamorphosed and developed Symmetry, upon which has 
been founded the science of Morphology. 

The reality and importance of this principle are not to be denied 
by us : we have shown how they are proved by its application in 
various sciences, and especially in botany. But those advocates of 
this principle who have placed it in antithesis to the doctrine of 
Final Causes, have by this means done far more injustice to their 
own favourite doctrine than damage to the one which they opposed. 
The adaptation of the bones of the skeleton to the muscles, the 
provision of fulcrums, projecting processes, channels, so that the 
motions and forces shall be such as the needs of life require, cannot 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 51 

possibly become less striking and convincing, from any discovery 
of general analogies of one animal frame with another, or of laws 
connecting the developement of different parts. Whenever such 
laws are discovered, we can only consider them as the means of 
producing that adaptation which we so much admire. Our convic- 
tion that the Artist works intelligently, is not destroyed, though it 
may be modified and transferred, when we obtain a sight of his 
tools. Our discovery of laws cannot contradict our persuasion of 
ends; our Morphology cannot prejudice our Teleology. 

16. The irresistible and constant apprehension of a purpose in 
the forms and functions of animals has introduced into the writings 
of speculators on these subjects various forms of expression, more 
or less precise, more or less figurative ; as, that animals are framed 
with a view to the part which they have to play ; — that nature does 
nothing in vain ; that she employs the best means for her ends ; 
and the like. However metaphorical or inexact any of these 
phrases may be in particular, yet taken altogether, they convey, 
clearly and definitely enough to preclude any serious error, a prin- 
ciple of the most profound reality and of the highest importance in 
the organical sciences. But some adherents of the morphological 
school of which I have spoken reject, and even ridicule, all such 
modes of expression. " I know nothing," says M. GeorTroy Saint- 
Hilaire, " of animals which have to play a part in nature. I cannot 
make of nature an intelligent being who does nothing in vain; 
who acts by the shortest mode ; who does all for the best." The 
philosophers of this school, therefore, do not, it would seem, feel 
any of the admiration which is irresistibly excited in all the rest of 
mankind at the contemplation of the various and wonderful adapta- 
tions for the preservation, the enjoyment, the continuation of the 
creatures which people the globe ; — at the survey of the mechanical 
contrivances, the chemical agencies, the prospective arrangements, 
the compensations, the minute adaptations, the comprehensive in- 
terdependencies, which zoology and physiology have brought into 
view, more and more, the further their researches have been carried. 
Yet the clear and deep-seated conviction of the reality of these 
provisions, which the study of anatomy produces in its most pro- 
found and accurate cultivators, cannot be shaken by any objections 
to the metaphors or terms in which this conviction is clothed. In 
regard to the idea of a purpose in organization, as in regard to any 
other idea, we cannot fully express our meaning by phrases borrowed 
from any extraneous source ; but that impossibility arises precisely 
from the circumstance of its being a fundamental idea which is 
inevitably assumed in our representation of each special fact. The 
same objection has been made to the idea of mechanical force, on 
account of its being often expressed in metaphorical language; for 
writers have spoken of an energy, effort, or solicitation to motion ; 
and bodies have been said to be animated by a force. Such lan- 
guage, it has been urged, implies volition, and the act of animated 
beings. But the idea of force as distinct from mere motion, — as 
the cause of motion, or of tendency to motion, — is not on that 



52 BIOLOGY. 

account less real. We endeavour in vain to conduct our mechanical 
reasonings without the aid of this idea, and must express it as we 
can. Just as little can we reason concerning organized beings 
without assuming that each part has its function, each function its 
purpose ; and so far as our phrases imply this, they will not mislead 
us, however inexact, or however figurative they be. 

17. The doctrine of a purpose in organization has been sometimes 
called the doctrine of the Conditions of Existence ; and has been 
stated as teaching that each animal must be so framed as to contain 
in its structure the conditions which its existence requires. When 
expressed in this manner, it has given rise to the objection, that it 
merely offers an identical proposition ; since no animal can exist 
without such conditions. But in reality, such expressions as those 
just quoted give an inadequate statement of the Principle of a Final 
Cause. For we discover in innumerable cases, arrangements in an 
animal, of which we see, indeed, that they are subservient to its 
well being; but the nature of which we never should have been 
able at all to conjecture, from considering what was necessary to 
its existence, and which strike us, no less by their unexpectedness 
than by their adaptation: so far are they from being presented by 
any perceptible necessity. Who would venture to say that the 
trochlear muscle, or the power of articulate speech, must occur in 
man, because they are the necessary conditions of his existence] 
When, indeed, the general scheme and mode of being of an animal 
are known, the expert and profound anatomist can reason concern- 
ing the proportions and form of its various parts and organs, and 
prove in some measure what their relations must be. We can 
assert, with Cuvier, that certain forms of the viscera require certain 
forms of the teeth, certain forms of the limbs, certain powers of the 
senses. But in all this, the functions of self-nutrition and digestion 
are supposed already existing as ends : and it being taken for 
granted, as the only conceivable basis of reasoning, that the organs 
are means to these ends, we may discover what modifications of 
these organs are necessarily related to and connected with each 
other. Instead of terming this rule of speculation merely "the 
principle of the conditions of existence," we might term it " the 
principle of the conditions of organs as means adapted to animal 
existence as their end" And how far this principle is from being 
a mere barren truism, the extraordinary discoveries made by the 
great assertor of the principle, and universally assented to by natu- 
ralists, abundantly prove. The vast extinct creation which is 
recalled to life in Cuvier's great work, the Ossemens Fossiles, 
cannot be the consequence of a mere identical proposition. 

18. It has been objected, also, that the doctrine of Final Causes 
supposes us to be acquainted with the intentions of the Creator ; 
which, it is insinuated, is a most presumptuous and irrational basis 
for our reasonings. But there can be nothing presumptuous or irra- 
tional in reasoning on that basis, which if we reject, we cannot 
reason at all. If men really can discern, and cannot help discern- 
ing, a design in certain portions of the works of creation, this per- 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 53 

ception is the soundest and most satisfactory ground for the convic- 
tions to which it leads. The Ideas which we necessarily employ 
in the contemplation of the world around us, afford us the only 
natural means of forming any conception of the Creator and 
Governor of the Universe ; and if we are by such means enabled to 
elevate our thoughts, however inadequately, towards Him, where 
is the presumption of doing sol or rather, where is the wisdom of 
refusing to open our minds to contemplations so animating and ele- 
vating, and yet so entirely convincing 7 We possess the ideas of 
time and space, under which all the objects of the universe present 
themselves to us ; and in virtue of these ideas thus possessed, we 
believe the Creator to be eternal and omnipotent. When we find 
that we, in like manner, possess the idea of a Design in Creation, 
and that with regard to ourselves, and creatures more or less 
resembling ourselves, we cannot but contemplate their constitution 
under this idea, we cannot abstain from ascribing to the Creator the 
infinite profundity and extent of design to which all these special 
instances belong as parts of a whole. 

19. I have here considered Design as manifest in organization 
only : for in that field of speculation it is forced upon us as contained 
in all the phenomena, and as the only mode of our understanding 
them. The existence of Final Causes has often been pointed out 
in other portions of the creation; — -'in the apparent adaptations of 
the various parts of the earth and of the solar system to each other 
and to organized beings. In these provinces of speculation, how- 
ever, the principle of Final Causes is no longer the basis and guide, 
but the sequel and result of our physical reasonings. If in looking 
at the universe, we follow the widest analogies of which we obtain 
a view, we see, however dimly, reason to believe that all its laws 
are adapted to each other, and intended to work together for the 
benefit of its organic population, and for the general welfare of its 
rational tenants. On this subject, however, not immediately in- 
cluded in the principle of Final Causes as here stated, I shall not 
dwell. I will only make this remark : that the assertion appears 
to be quite unfounded, that as science advances from point to point, 
Final Causes recede before it, and disappear one after the other. 
The principle of design changes its mode of application indeed, but 
it loses none of its force. We no longer consider particular facts 
as produced by special interpositions, but we consider design as 
exhibited in the establishment and adjustment of the laws by which 
particular facts are produced. We do not look upon each particular 
cloud as brought near us that it may drop fatness on our fields, but 
the general adaptation of the laws of heat, and air, and moisture, to 
the promotion of vegetation, does not become doubtful. We do not 
consider the sun as less intended to warm and vivify the tribes of 
plants and animals, because we find that, instead of revolving round 
the earth as an attendant, the earth along with other planets revolves 
round him. We are rather, by the discovery of the general laws 
of nature, led into a scene of wider design, of deeper contrivance, of 
more comprehensive adjustments. Final Causes, if thev appear 

■ 5* 



54 PAL^TIOLOGY. 

driven further from us by such an extension of our views, embrace 
us only with a vaster and more majestic circuit : instead of a few 
threads connecting some detached objects, they become a stupen- 
dous network, which is wound round and round the universal 
frame of things. 



PAL^TIOLOGY. 

NATURE OF PALiETIOLOGY. 

*1. The class of Sciences which I designate as Palsetiological 
are those in which the object is to ascend from the present state of 
things to a more ancient condition, from which the present is 
derived by intelligible causes. As conspicuous examples of this 
class we may take Geology, Glossology or Comparative Philology, 
and Comparative Archaeology. These provinces of knowledge 
might perhaps be intelligibly described as Histories ; the History of 
the Earth, — the History of Languages, — the History of Arts. But 
these phrases would not fully describe the sciences we have in 
view; for the object to which we now suppose their investigations 
to be directed is not merely to ascertain what the series of events 
has been, as in the common forms of History, but also how it has 
been brought about. These sciences are to treat of causes as well 
as of effects. Such researches might be termed philosophical 
history ; or, in order to mark more distinctly that the causes of 
events are the leading object of attention, etiological history. But 
since it will be more convenient to describe this class of sciences by 
a single appellation, I have taken the liberty of proposing to call 
themf Palcetiological Sciences. 

While Paleontology describes the beings which have lived in 
former ages without investigating their causes, and JEttiology 
treats of causes without distinguishing historical from mechanical 
causation ; Pal&tiology is a combination of the two sciences ; ex- 
ploring by means of the second the phenomena presented by the 
first. The portions of knowledge which I include in this term are 
palaBontological aetiological sciences. 

2. All these sciences are connected by this bond ; — that they all 
endeavour to ascend to a past state, by considering what is the pre- 
sent state of things, and what are the causes of change. Geology 
examines the existing appearances of the materials which form the 

* Phil. Ind. S. C. Book x. Chap. i. 

t A philological writer, in a very interesting work, (Mr. Donaldson, 
in his New Cratylus, p. 12,) expresses his dislike of this word, and sug- 
gests that I must mean palce.cetiological. I think the word is more likely 
to obtain currency in the more compact and euphonious form in which 
I have used it. It has been adopted by Mr. Winning, in his Manual of 
Comparative Philology. 



NATURE OF PAL-ETIOLOGY. 55 

earth, infers from them previous conditions, and speculates con- 
cerning the forces by which one condition has been made to suc- 
ceed another. Another science, cultivated with great zeal and 
success in modern times, compares the languages of different coun- 
tries and nations, and by an examination of their materials and 
structure, endeavours to determine their descent from one another: 
this science has been termed Comparative Philology or Ethnogra- 
phy ; and by the French, Linguislique, a word which we might 
imitate in order to have a single name for the science, but the 
Greek derivative Glossology appears to be more convenient in its 
form. The progress of the Arts (Architecture and the like); how 
one stage of their culture produced another; and how far we can 
trace their maturest and most complete condition to their earliest 
form in various nations; — are problems of great interest belonging 
to another subject, which we may for the present term Compara- 
tive Archaeology. I have already noticed, in the History,* how 
the researches into the origin of natural objects, and those relating 
to works of art, pass by slight gradations into each other; how the 
examination of the changes which have affected an ancient temple 
or fortress, harbour or river, may concern alike the geologist and 
the antiquary. Cuvier's assertion that the geologist is an antiquary 
of a new order, is perfectly correct, for both are palsetiologists. 

3. We are very far from having exhausted, by this enumeration, 
the class of sciences which are thus connected. We may easily 
point out many other subjects of speculation of the same kind. 
As we may look back towards the first condition of our planet, we 
may in like manner turn our thoughts towards the first condition 
of the solar system, and try whether we can discern any traces of 
an order of things antecedent to that which is now established ; 
and if we find, as some great mathematicians have conceived, in- 
dications of an earlier state in which the planets were not yet 
gathered into their present forms, we have, in the pursuit of this 
train of research, a palaetiological portion of Astronomy. Again, 
as we may inquire how languages, and how man, have been dif- 
fused over the earth's surface from place to place, we may make 
the like inquiry with regard to the races of plants and animals, 
founding our inferences upon the existing geographical distribution 
of the animal and vegetable kingdoms: and thus the Geography 
of Plants and of Animals also becomes a portion of Palaetiology. 
Again, as we can in some measure trace the progress of Arts from 
nation to nation and from age to age, we can also pursue a similar 
investigation with respect to the progress of Mythology, of Poetry, 
of Government, of Law. Thus the philosophical history of the 
human race, viewed with reference to these subjects, if it can give 
rise to knowledge so exact as to be properly called Science, will 
supply sciences belonging to the class I am now to consider. 

4. It is not an arbitrary and useless proceeding to construct such 
a class of sciences. For wide and various as their subjects are, it 

* Hist. Ind. Sci. iii., 482. 



56 PAL.ETIOLOGY. 

will be found that they have all certain principles, maxims, and 
rules of procedure in common; and thus may reflect light upon 
each other by being treated of together. Indeed it will, I trust, 
appear, that we may by such a juxtaposition of different specula- 
tions, obtain most salutary lessons. And questions, which, when 
viewed as they first present themselves under the aspect of a spe- 
cial science, disturb and alarm men's minds, may perhaps be con- 
templated more calmly, as well as more clearly, when they are 
considered as general problems of palsetiology. 

5. It will at once occur to the reader that, if we include in the 
circuit of our classification such subjects as have been mentioned, 
— politics and law, mythology and poetry, — we are travelling very 
far beyond the material sciences within whose limits we at the out- 
set proposed to confine our discussion of principles. But we shall 
remain faithful to our original plan; and for that purpose shall con- 
fine ourselves in this work to those palsetiological sciences which 
deal with material things. It is true, that the general principles 
and maxims which regulate these sciences apply also to investiga- 
tions of a parallel kind respecting the products which result from 
man's imaginative and social endowments. But although there 
may be a similarity in the general form of such portions of know- 
ledge, their materials are so different from those with which we 
have been hitherto dealing, that we cannot hope to take them into 
our present account with any profit. Language, Government, 
Law, Poetry, Art, embrace a number of peculiar Fundamental 
Ideas, hitherto not touched upon in the disquisitions in which we 
have been engaged ; and most of them involved in far greater per- 
plexity and ambiguity, the subject of controversies far more vehe- 
ment, than the Ideas we have hitherto been examining. We must 
therefore avoid resting any part of our philosophy upon sciences, 
or supposed sciences, which treat of such subjects. To attend to 
this caution, is the only way in which we can secure the advan- 
tage we proposed to ourselves at the outset, of taking, as the basis 
of our speculations, none but systems of undisputed truths, clearly 
understood and expressed.* We have already said that we must, 
knowingly and voluntarily, resign that livelier and warmer interest 
which doctrines on subjects of Polity or Art possess, and content 
ourselves with the cold truths of the material sciences, in order 
that we may avoid having the very foundations of our philosophy 
involved in controversy, doubt, and obscurity. 

6. We may remark, however, that the necessity of rejecting 
from our survey a large portion of the researches which the gene- 
ral notion of Palsetiology includes, suggests one consideration which 
adds to the interest of our task. We began our inquiry with the 
trust that any sound views which we should be able to obtain re- 
specting the nature of truth in the physical sciences, and the mode 
of discovering it, must also tend to throw light upon the nature 
and prospects of knowledge of all other kinds; — must be useful to 

* See Phil. Ind. Sci. Vol. i. p. 8. 



DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 57 

us in moral, political, and philological researches. We stated this 
as a confident anticipation; and the evidence of the justice of our 
belief already begins to appear. We have seen that biology leads 
us to psychology, if we choose to follow the path ; and thus the 
passage from the material to the immaterial has already unfolded 
itself at one point; and we now perceive that there are several 
large provinces of speculation which concern subjects belonging to 
man's immaterial nature, and which are governed by the same laws 
as sciences altogether physical. It is not our business here to 
dwell on the prospects which our philosophy thus opens to our con- 
templation; but we may allow ourselves, in this last stage of our 
pilgrimage among the foundations of the physical sciences, to be 
cheered and animated by the ray that thus beams upon us, however 
dimly, from a higher and brighter region. 

But in our reasonings and examples we shall mainly confine our- 
selves to the physical sciences ; and for the most part to Geology, 
which in the History I have put forwards as the best representative 
of the Palsetiological Sciences. 

DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES AND OF UNIFORMITY. 

1. Doctrine of Catastrophes. — The attempts to frame a theory of 
the earth have brought into view two completely opposite opinions: 
— one, which represents the course of nature as uniform through 
all ages, the causes which produce change having had the same 
intensity in former times which they have at the present day; — the 
other opinion, which sees in the present condition of things evi- 
dences of catastrophes ; changes of a more sweeping kind, and pro- 
duced by more powerful agencies than those which occur in recent 
times. Geologists who held the latter opinion, maintained that the 
forces which have elevated the Alps or the Andes to their present 
height could not have been any forces which are now in action : 
they pointed to vast masses of strata hundreds of miles long, thou- 
sands of feet thick, thrown into highly-inclined positions, fractured, 
dislocated, crushed : they remarked that upon the shattered edges 
of such strata they found enormous accumulations of fragments and 
rubbish, rounded by the action of water, so as to denote ages of vio- 
lent aqueous action : they conceived that they saw instances in 
which whole mountains of rock in a state of igneous fusion, must 
have burst the earth's crust from below : they found that in the 
course of the revolutions by which one stratum of rock was placed 
upon another, the whole collection of animal species which tenanted 
the earth and the seas had been removed, and a new set of living 
things introduced in its place : finally, they found above all the 
strata vast masses of sand and gravel containing bones of animals, 
and apparently the work of a mighty deluge. With all these proofs 
before their eyes they thought it impossible not to judge that the 
agents of change by which the world was urged from one condition 
to another till it reached its present state, must have been more 
violent, more powerful, than any which we see at work around us. 



58 PAL^TIOLOGY. 

They conceived that the evidence of M catastrophes" was irre- 
sistible. 

2. Doctrine of Uniformity. — I need not here repeat the narra- 
tive (given in the History*) of the process by which this formi- 
dable array of proofs was, in the minds of some eminent geologists, 
weakened, and at last overcome. This was done by showing that 
the sudden breaks in the succession of strata were apparent only, 
the discontinuity of the series which occurred in one country being 
removed by terms interposed in another locality : by urging that 
the total effect produced by existing causes, taking into account the 
accumulated result of long period?, is far greater than a casual 
speculator would think possible : by making it appear that there are 
in many parts of the world evidences of a slow and imperceptible 
rising of the land since it was the habitation of now existing spe- 
cies: by proving that it is not universally true that the strata sepa- 
rated in time by supposed catastrophes contain distinct species of 
animals : by pointing out the limited fields of the supposed diluvial 
action : and finally, by remarking that though the creation of spe- 
cies is a mystery, the extinction of them is going on in our own 
day. Hypotheses were suggested, too, by which it was conceived 
that the change of climate might be explained, which, as the con- 
sideration of the fossil remains seemed to show, must have taken 
place between the ancient and the modern times. In this manner 
the whole evidence of catastrophes was explained away: the notion 
of a series of paroxysms of violence in the causes of change was 
represented as a delusion arising from our contemplating short 
periods only in the action of present causes: length of time was 
called in to take the place of intensity of force: and it was declared 
that geology need not despair of accounting for the revolutions of 
the earth, as astronomy accounts for the revolutions of the heavens, 
by the universal action of causes which are close at hand to us, 
operating through time and space without variation or decay. 

An antagonism of opinions, somewhat of the same kind as this, 
will be found to manifest itself in the other Palsetiological Sciences 
as well as in Geology ; and it will be instructive to endeavour to 
balance these opposite doctrines. I will mention some of the con- 
siderations which bear upon the subject 

3. Is Uniformity probable a priori? — The doctrine of Uniformity 
in the course of nature has sometimes been represented by its ad- 
herents as possessing a great degree of a priori probability. It is 
highly unphilosophical, it has been urged, to assume that the causes 
of the geological events of former times were of a different kind 
from causes now in action, if causes of this latter kind can in any 
way be made to explain the facts. The analogy of all other sciences 
compels us, it was said, to explain phenomena by known, not by 
unknown, causes. And on these grounds the geological teacher 
recommendedf "an earnest and patient endeavour to reconcile the 
indications of former change with the evidence of gradual mutations 
now in progress." 

* Hist. Ind. Sci., in. 612. t Lyell, B. iv. c. i. p. 328. 



i 



DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 59 

But on this we may remark, that if by known causes we mean 
causes acting with the same intensity which they have during his- 
torical times, the restriction is altogether arbitrary and groundless. 
Let it be granted, for instance, that many parts of the earth's sur- 
face are now undergoing an imperceptible rise. Jt is not pretended 
that the rate of this elevation is rigorously uniform ; what, then, 
are the limits of its velocity? Why may it not increase so as to 
assume that character of violence which we may term a catastrophe 
with reference to all changes hitherto recorded? Why may not 
the rate of elevation be such that we may conceive the strata to 
assume suddenly a position nearly vertical ? and is it, in fact, easy 
to conceive a position of strata nearly vertical, a position which 
occurs so frequently, to be gradually assumed? In cases where 
the strata are nearly vertical, as in the Isle of Wight, and hundreds 
of other places, or where they are actually inverted, as sometimes 
occurs, are not the causes which have produced the effect as truly 
known causes, as those which have raised the coasts where we 
trace the former beach in an elevated terrace ? If the latter case 
proves slow elevation, does not the former case prove rapid eleva- 
tion? In neither case have we any measure of the time employed 
in the change ; but does not the very nature of the results enable 
us to discern, that if one was gradual, the other was comparatively 
sudden ? 

The causes which are now elevating a portion of Scandinavia 
can be called known causes, only because we know the effect. Are 
not the causes which have elevated the Alps and the Andes known 
causes in the same sense? We know nothing in either case which 
confines the intensity of the force within any limit, or prescribes to 
it any law of uniformity. Why, then, should we make a merit of 
cramping our speculations by such assumptions? Whether the 
causes of change do act uniformly ; — whether they oscillate only 
within narrow limits; — whether their intensity in former times was 
nearly the same as it now is ; — these are precisely the questions 
which we wish Nature to answer to us impartially and truly : where 
is then the wisdom of" an earnest and patient endeavour" to secure 
an affirmative reply ? 

Thus I conceive that the assertion of an a priori claim to proba- 
bility and philosophical spirit in favour of the doctrine of uniformity, 
is quite untenable. We must learn from an examination of all the 
facts, and not from any assumption of our own, whether the course 
of nature be uniform. The limit of intensity being really unknown, 
catastrophes are just as probable as uniformity. If a volcano may 
repose for a thousand years, and then break out and destroy a city ; 
why may not another volcano repose for ten thousand years, and 
then destroy a continent; or if a continent, why not the whole 
habitable surface of the earth ? 

4. Cycle of Uniformity indefinite. — But this argument may be 
put in another form. When it is said that the course of nature is 
uniform, the assertion is not intended to exclude certain smaller 
variations of violence and rest, such as we have just spoken of;— 



60 PAL.&TIOLOGY. 

alternations of activity and repose in volcanos ; or earthquakes, 
deluges, and storms, interposed in a more tranquil state of things. 
With regard to such occurrences, terrible as they appear at the 
time, they may not much afreet the average rate of change ; there 
may be a cycle, though an irregular one, of rapid and slow change ; 
and if such cycles go on succeeding each other, we may still call 
the order of nature uniform, notwithstanding the periods of violence 
which it involves. The maximum and minimum intensities of the 
forces of mutation alternate with one another ; and we may esti- 
mate the average course of nature as that which corresponds to 
something between the two extremes. 

But if we thus attempt to maintain the uniformity of nature by 
representing it as a series of cycles, we find that we cannot dis- 
cover, in this conception, any solid ground for excluding catas- 
trophes. What is the length of that cycle the repetition of which 
constitutes uniformity 1 What interval from the maximum to the 
minimum does it admit of? We may take for our cycle a hundred 
or a thousand years, but evidently such a proceeding is altogether 
arbitrary. We may mark our cycles by the greatest known 
paroxysms of volcanic and terremotive agency, but this procedure 
is no less indefinite and inconclusive than the other. 

But further; since the cycle in which violence and repose alter- 
nate is thus indefinite in its length and in its range of activity, 
what ground have we for assuming more than one such cycle, ex- 
tending from the origin of things to the present time 1 Why may 
we not suppose the maximum force of the causes of change to have 
taken place at the earliest period, and the tendency towards the 
minimum to have gone on ever since? Or instead of only one 
cycle, there may have been several, but of such length that our 
historical period forms a portion only of the last ; — the feeblest 
portion of the latest cycle. And thus violence and repose may 
alternate upon a scale of time and intensity so large, that man's 
experience supplies no evidence enabling him to estimate the 
amount. The course of things is uniform, to an intelligence which 
can embrace the succession of several cycles, but it is catastrophic 
to the contemplation of man, whose survey can grasp a part only of 
one cycle. And thus the hypothesis of uniformity, since it cannot 
exclude degrees of change, nor limit the range of these degrees, 
nor define the interval of their recurrence, cannot possess any essen- 
tial simplicity which, previous to inquiry, gives it a claim upon our 
assent superior to that of the opposite catastrophic hypothesis. 

5. Uniformitarian Arguments are Negative only. — There is an 
opposite tendency in the mode of maintaining the catastrophist and 
the uniformitarian opinions, which depends upon their fundamental 
principles, and shows itself in all the controversies between them. 
The Catastrophist is affirmative, the Uniformitarian is negative in his 
assertions : the former is constantly attempting to construct a theory ; 
the latter delights in demolishing all theories. The one is constantly 
bringing fresh evidence of some great past event, or series of events, 
of a striking and definite kind ; his antagonist is at every step explain- 



DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 61 

ing away the evidence, and showing that it proves nothing. One 
geologist adduces his proofs of a vast universal deluge; but another 
endeavours to show that the proofs do not establish either the 
universality or the vastness of such an event. The inclined broken 
edges of a certain formation covered with their own fragments 
beneath superjacent horizontal deposits are at one time supposed 
to prove a catastrophic breaking up of the earlier strata; but this 
opinion is controverted by showing that the same formations, when 
pursued into other countries, exhibit a uniform gradation from the 
lower to the upper, with no trace of violence. Extensive and lofty 
elevations of the coast, continents of igneous rock, at first appear 
to indicate operations far more gigantic than those which now 
occur ; but attempts are soon made to show that time only is want- 
ing to enable the present age to rival the past in the production of 
such changes. Each new fact adduced by the catastrophist is at 
first striking and apparently convincing; but as it becomes familiar, 
it strikes the imagination less powerfully ; and the uniformitarian, 
constantly labouring to produce some imitation of it by the machinery 
which he has so well studied, at last in every case seems to himself 
to succeed, so far as to destroy the effect of his opponent's evidence. 
This is so with regard to more remote, as well as with regard to 
immediate evidences of change. When it is ascertained that in 
every part of the earth's crust the temperature increases as we 
descend below the surface, at first this fact seems to indicate a 
central heat : and a central heat naturally suggests an earlier state 
of the mass, in which it was incandescent, and from which it is 
now cooling. But this original incandescence of the g\obe of the 
earth is manifestly an entire violation of the present course of 
things ; it belongs to the catastrophist view, and the advocates of 
uniformity have to explain it away. Accordingly, one of them 
holds that this increase of heat in descending below the surface 
may very possibly not go on all the way to the centre. The heat 
which increases at first as we descend, may, he conceives, after- 
wards decrease ; and he suggests causes which may have produced 
such a succession of hotter and colder shells within the mass of the 
earth. I have mentioned this suggestion in the History of Geology ; 
and have given my reasons for believing it altogether untenable.* 
Other persons also, desirous of reconciling this subterraneous heat 
with the tenet of uniformity, have offered another suggestion : — 
that the warmth or incandescence of the interior parts of the earth 
does not arise out of an originally hot condition from which it is 
gradually cooling, but results from chemical action constantly going 
on among the materials of the earth's substance. And thus new 
attempts arc perpetually making, to escape from the cogency of 
the reasonings which send us towards an original state of things 
different from the present. Those who theorize concerning an 
origin go on building up the fabric of their speculations, while 
those who think such theories unphilosophical, ever and anon dig 

* Hist. Ind. Sci. iii. 562, and note. 
6 



62 FAL^TilOLOGY. 

away the foundation of this structure. As we have already said, 
the uniformitarian's doctrines are a collection of negatives. 

This is so entirely the case, that J.he uniformitarian would for the 
most part shrink from maintaining as positive tenets the explana- 
tions which he so willingly uses as instruments of controversy. He 
puts forward his suggestions as difficulties, but he will not stand by 
them as doctrines. And this is in accordance with his general 
tendency ; for any of his hypotheses, if insisted upon as positive 
theories, would be found inconsistent with the assertion of uni- 
formity. For example, the nebular hypothesis appears to give to 
the history of the heavens an aspect which obliterates all special 
acts of creation, for, according to that hypothesis, new planetary 
systems are constantly forming ; but when asserted as the origin of 
our own solar system, it brings with it an original incandescence, 
and an origin of the organic world. And if, instead of using the 
chemical theory of subterraneous heat to neutralize the evidence of 
original incandescence, we assert it as a positive tenet, we can no 
longer maintain the infinite past duration of the earth ; for chemical 
forces, as well as mechanical, tend to equilibrium ; and that con- 
dition once attained, their efficacy ceases. Chemical affinities tend 
to form new compounds; and though, when many and various ele- 
ments are mingled together, the play of synthesis and analysis may 
go on for a long time, it must at last end. If, for instance, a large 
portion of the earth's mass were originally pure potassium, we can 
imagine violent igneous action to goon so long as any part remained 
unoxidized ; but when the oxidation of the whole has once taken 
place, this action must be at an end ; for there is in the hypothesis 
no agency which can reproduce the deoxidized metal. Thus a 
perpetual motion is impossible in chemistry, as it is in mechanics; 
and a theory of constant change continued through infinite time, is 
untenable when asserted upon chemical, no less than upon mechani- 
cal principles. And thus the scepticism of the uniformitarian is of 
force only so long as it is employed against the dogmatism of the 
catastrophist. When the doubts are erected into dogmas, they are 
no longer consistent with the tenet of uniformity. When the ne- 
gations become affirmations, the negation of an origin vanishes also. 
6. Uniformity in the Organic World. — In speaking of the violent 
and sudden changes which constitute catastrophes, our thoughts 
naturally turn at first to great mechanical and physical effects; — 
ruptures and displacements of strata; extensive submersions and 
emersions of land ; rapid changes of temperature. But the catas- 
trophes which we have to consider in geology affect the organic as 
well as the inorganic world. The sudden extinction of one collec- 
tion of species, and the introduction of another in their place, is a 
catastrophe, even if unaccompanied by mechanical violence. Ac- 
cordingly, the antagonism of the catastrophist and uniformitarian 
school has showm itself in this department of the subject, as well as 
in the other. When geologists had first discovered that the suc- 
cessive strata are each distinguished by appropriate organic fossils, 
they assumed at once that each of these collections of living things 
belonged to a separate creation. But this conclusion^ as I have 



DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 63 

already said, Mr. Lyell has attempted to invalidate, by proving that 
in the existing order of thing-?, some species become extinct; and 
by suggesting it as possible, that in the same order it may be true 
that new species arc from time to time produced, even in the pre- 
sent course of nature. And in this, as in the other part of the sub- 
ject, he calls in the aid of vast periods of time, in order that the 
violence of the changes may be softened down : and he appears 
disposed to believe that the actual extinction and creation of species 
may be so slow as to excite no more notice than it has hitherto 
obtained ; and yet may be rapid enough, considering the immensity 
of geological periods, to produce such a succession of different col- 
lections of species as we find in the strata of the earth's surface. 

7. Origin of the present Organic World. — The last great event 
in the history of the vegetable and animal kingdoms was that by 
which their various tribes were placed in their present seats. And 
we may form various hypotheses with regard to the sudden or gra- 
dual manner in which we may suppose this distribution to have 
taken place. We may assume that at the beginning of the present 
order of things, a stock of each species was placed in the vegetable 
or animal province to which it belongs, by some cause out of the 
common order of nature; or we may take a uniformitarian view of 
the subject, and suppose that the provinces of the organic world 
derived their population from some anterior state of things by the 
operation of natural causes. 

Nothing has been pointed out in the existing order of things 
which has any analogy or resemblance, of any valid kind, to that 
creative energy which must be exerted in the production of a new 
species. And to assume the introduction of new species as 
a part of the order of nature, without pointing out any natural 
fact with which such an event can be classed, would be to reject 
creation by an arbitrary act. Hence, even on natural grounds, 
the most intelligible view of the history of the animal and vegetable 
kingdoms seems to be, that each period which is marked by a dis- 
tinct collection of species forms a cycle; and that at the beginning 
of each such cycle a creative power was exerted, of a kind to which 
there was nothing at all analogous in the succeeding part of the 
same cycle. If it be urged that in some cases the same species, or 
the same genus, runs through two geological formations, which 
must, on other grounds, be referred to different cycles of creative 
energy, we may reply that the creation of many new species does 
not imply the extinction of all the old ones. 

Thus we are led by our reasonings to this view, that the present 
order of things was commenced by an act of creative power entirely 
different to any agency which has been exerted since. None of the 
influences which have modified the present races of animals and 
plants since they were placpd in their habitations on the earth's 
surface can have had any efficacy in producing them at first. We 
are necessarily driven to assume, as the beginning of the present 
cycle of organic nature, an event not included in the course of 
nature. And we may remark that this necessity is the more cogent, 
precisely because other cycles have preceded the present. 



64 PALJET10L0GY. 

8. Nebular Origin of the Solar System. — If we attempt to apply 
the same antithesis of opinion (the doctrines of catastrophe and 
uniformity), to the other subjects of palsetiological science, we shall 
be led to similar conclusions. Thus if we turn our attention to 
astronomical palsetiology, we perceive that the nebular hypothesis 
lias a uniformitarian tendency. According to this hypothesis the 
formation of this our system of sun, planets, and satellites, was a 
process of the same kind as those which are still going on in the 
heavens. One after another, nebula? condense into separate masses, 
which begin to revolve about each other by mechanical necessity, 
and form systems of which our solar system is a finished example. 
But we may remark, that the uniformitarian doctrine on this subject 
rests on most unstable foundations. We have as yet only very 
vague and imperfect reasonings to show that by such condensation a 
material system such as ours could result; and the introduction of 
organized beings into such a material system is utterly out of the 
reach of our philosophy. Here again, therefore, we are led to 
regard the present order of the world as pointing towards an origin 
altogether of a different kind from any thing which our material 
science can grasp. 

9. Origin of Languages. — We may venture to say that we 
should be led to the same conclusion once more, if we were to 
take into our consideration those palaBtiological sciences which are 
beyond the domain of matter; for instance, the history of languages. 
We may explain many of the differences and changes which we 
become acquainted with, by referring to the action of causes of 
change which still operate. But what glossologist will venture to 
declare that the efficacy of such causes has been uniform ; that the 
influences which mould a language, or make one language differ 
from others*pf the same stock, operated formerly with no more 
efficacy than they exercise now. " Where," as has elsewhere 
been asked, " do we now find a language in the process of forma- 
tion, unfolding itself in inflexions, terminations, changes of vowels 
by grammatical relations, such as characterise the oldest known 
languages]" Again, as another proof how little the history of 
languages suggests to the philosophical glossologist the persuasion 
of a uniform action of the causes of change, I may refer to the 
conjecture or*Dr. Prichard, that the varieties of language produced 
by the separation of one stock into several, have been greater and 
greater as we go backwards in history: — that* the formation of 
sister dialects from a common language, (as the Scandinavian, 
German, and Saxon dialects from the Teutonic, or the Gaelic, 
Erse and Welsh from the Celtic,) belongs to the first millennium 
before the Christian era; while the formation of cognate languages 
of the same family, as the Sanskrit, Latin, Greek and Gothic, must 
be placed at least two thousand years before that era; and at a still 
earlier period took place the separation of the great families them- 
selves, the Indo-European, Semitic, and others, in which it is now 

* Researches, ii. 224. 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 65 

difficult to trace the features of a common origin. No hypothesis 
except one of this kind will explain the existence of the families, 
groups, and dialects of languages, which we find in existence. Yet 
this is an entirely different view from that which the hypothesis of 
the uniform progress of change would give. And thus in the 
earliest stages of man's career, the revolutions of language must 
have been, even by the evidence of the theoretical history of 
language itself, of an order altogether different from any which 
have taken place within the recent history of man. And we may 
add, that as the early stages of the progress of language must have 
been widely different from those later ones of which we can in 
some measure trace the natural causes, we cannot place the origin 
of language in any point of view in which it comes under the 
jurisdiction of natural causation at all. 

10. No Natural Origin discoverable. — We are thus led by a 
survey of several of the palsetiological sciences to a confirmation 
of the principle formerly asserted,* That in no palsetiological 
science has man been able to arrive at a beginning which is homo- 
geneous with the known course of events. We can in such 
sciences often go very far back; — determine many of the remote 
circumstances of the past series of events; — ascend to a point 
which seems to be near the origin ; — and limit the hypothesis re- 
specting the origin itself: — but philosophers never have demon- 
strated, and, so far as we can judge, probably never will be able to 
demonstrate, what was that primitive state of things from which 
the progressive course of the world took its first departure. In all 
these paths of research, when we travel far backwards, the aspect 
of the earlier portions becomes very different from that of the ad- 
vanced part on which we now stand ; but in all cases the path is 
loit in obscurity as it is traced backwards towards its starting 
osdnt: — it becomes not only invisible, but unimaginable; it is not 
only an interruption, but an abyss, which interposes itself between 
us and any intelligible beginning of things. 

RELATION OF TRADITION TO PALiETIOLOGY. 

1. Importance of Tradition. — Since the Palsetiological Sciences 
have it lor their business to study the train of past events produced 
by natural causes down to the present time, the knowledge con- 
cerning such events which is supplied by the remembrance and 
records of man, in whatever form, must have an important bearing 
upon these sciences. All changes in the condition and extent of 
land and sea, which have taken place within man's observation, all 
effects of deluges, sea-waves, rivers, springs, volcanos, earthquakes, 
and the like, which come within the reach of human history, have 
a strong interest for the palaetiologist. Nor is he less concerned in 
all recorded instances of the modification of the forms and habits 
of plants and animals, by the operations of man, or by transfer 

* Hist. Ind. Sci., iii. 581. 
6* 



66 PAL^rriOLOGY. 

from one land to another. And when we come to the Palaetiology 
of Language, of Art, of Civilization, we find our subject still more 
closely connected with history ; for in truth these are historical, no 
less than palsetiologieal investigations. But, confining ourselves at 
present to the material sciences, we may observe that though the 
importance of the information which tradition gives us, in the 
sciences 'now under our consideration, as, for instance, geology, has 
long been tacitly recognised ; yet it is only recently that geologists 
have employed themselves in collecting their historical facts upon 
such a scale and with such comprehensive views as are required 
by the interest and use of collections of this kind. The Essay of 
Von Hoff,* On the Natural Alterations in the Surface of the 
Earth which are proved by Tradition, was the work which first 
opened the eyes of geologists to the extent and importance of this 
kind of investigation. Since that time the same path of research 
has been pursued with great perseverance by others, especially by 
Mr. Lyell ; and is now justly considered as an essential portion of 
geology. 

2. Connexion of Tradition and Science. — Events which we 
might naturally expect to have some bearing on geology, are re- 
corded in the historical writings which, even on mere human 
grounds, have the strongest claim to our respect as records of the 
early history of the world, and are confirmed by the traditions of 
various nations all over the globe, namely, the formation of the 
earth and its population, and a subsequent deluge. It has been 
made a matter of controversy how the narrative of these events is 
to be understood, so as to make it agree with the facts which an 
examination of the earth's surface and of its vegetable and animal 
population discloses to us. Such controversies, when they are 
considered as merely archaeological, may occur in any of the palee- 
tiological sciences. We may have to compare and to reconcile 
the evidence of existing phenomena with that of historical tradi- 
tion. But under some circumstances this process of conciliation 
may assume an interest of another kind, on which we will make a 
few remarks. 

3. Natural and Providential History of the World. — We may 
contemplate the existence of man upon the earth, his origin and 
his progress, in the same manner as we contemplate the existence 
of any other race of animals ; namely, in a purely palsetiological 
view. We may consider how far our knowledge of laws of causation 
enables us to explain his diffusion and migration, his differences and 
resemblances, his actions and works. And this is the view of man 
as a member of the natural course of things. 

But man, at the same time the contemplator and the subject of 
his own contemplation, endowed with faculties and powers which 
make him a being of a different nature from other animals, cannot 
help regarding his own actions and enjoyments, his recollections 
and his hopes, under an aspect quite different from any that we 

* Vol. i. 1822 ; Vol. ii. 1824. 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 67 

have yet had presented to us. We have been endeavouring to 
place in a clear light the Fundamental Ideas, such as that of Cause, 
on which depends our knowledge of the natural course of things. 
But there are other Ideas to which man necessarily refers his 
actions ; he is led by his nature, not only to consider his own 
actions, and those of his fellow-men, as springing out of this or 
that cause, leading to this or that material result ; but also as good 
or bad, as what they ought or ought not to be. lie has Ideas of 
moral relations as well as those Ideas of material relations with 
which we have hitherto been occupied. He is a moral as well as 
a natural agent. 

Contemplating himself and the world around him by the light of 
his Moral Ideas, man is led to the conviction that his moral faculties 
were bestowed upon him by design and for a purpose ; that he is 
the subject of a moral government ; that the course of the world 
is directed by the Power which governs it, to the unfolding and 
perfecting of man's moral nature; that this guidance may be 
traced in the career of individuals and of the world; that there is 
a providential as well as a natural course of things. 

Yet this view is beset by no small difficulties. The full develope- 
ment of man's moral faculties ; — the perfection of his nature up to 
the measure of his own ideas; — the adaptation of his moral being 
to an ultimate destination, by its transit through a world full of 
moral evil, in which each has his share ; — are effects for which the 
economy of the world appears to contain no adequate provision. 
Man, though aware of his moral nature, and ready to believe in an 
ultimate destination of purity and blessedness, is too feeble to resist 
the temptation of evil, and to restore his purity when once lost. 
He cannot but look for some confirmation of that providential order 
which he has begun to believe; some provision for those deficiencies 
in his moral condition which he has begun to feel. 

He looks at the history of the world, and he finds that at a certain 
period it offers to him the promise of what he seeks. When the 
natural powers of man had been developed to their full extent, and 
were beginning to exhibit symptoms of decay ; when the intel- 
lectual progress of the world appeared to have reached its limit, 
without supplying man's moral needs; we find the great Epoch in 
the Providential history of the world. We find the announcement 
of a Dispensation by which man's deficiencies shall be supplied and 
his aspirations fulfilled : we find a provision for the purification, the 
support, and the ultimate beatification of those who use the provided 
means. And thus the providential course of the world becomes 
consistent and intelligible. 

4. The Sacred Narrative. — But with the new Dispensation, we 
receive, not only on account of its own scheme and history, but 
also a written narrative of the providential course of the world 
from the earliest times, and even from its first creation. This 
narrative is recognised and authorized by the new dispensation, 
and accredited by some of the same evidences as the dispensation 
itself. That the existence of such a sacred narrative should be a 



68 PALiETIOLOGY. 

part of the providential order of things, cannot but appear natural ; 
but naturally also, the study of it leads to some difficulties. 

The Sacred Narrative in some of its earliest portions speaks of 
natural objects and occurrences respecting them. In the very 
beginning of the course of the world, we may readily believe (in- 
deed, as we have seen in the last chapter, our scientific researches 
lead us to believe) that such occurrences were very different from 
any thing which now takes place ; — different to an extent and in a 
manner which we cannot estimate. Now the narrative must speak 
of objects and occurrences in the words and phrases which have 
derived their meaning from their application to the existing natural 
state of things. When applied to an initial supernatural state 
therefore, these words and phrases cannot help being to us obscure 
and mysterious, perhaps ambiguous and seemingly contradictory. 

5. Difficulties in interpreting the Sacred Narrative. — The 
moral and providential relations of man's condition are so much 
more important to him than mere natural relations, that at first we 
may well suppose he will accept the Sacred Narrative, as not only 
unquestionable in its true import, but also as a guide in his views 
even of mere natural relations. He will try to modify the concep- 
tions which he entertains of objects and their properties, so that 
the Sacred Narrative of the supernatural condition shall retain the 
first meaning which he had put upon it in virtue of his own habits 
in the usage of language. 

But man is so constituted that he cannot persist in this procedure. 
The powers and tendencies of his intellect are such that he cannot 
help trying to attain true conceptions of objects and their properties 
by the study of things themselves. For instance, when he at first 
read of a firmament dividing the waters above from the waters 
below, he perhaps conceived a transparent floor in the skies, on 
which the superior waters rested which descended in rain; but as 
his observations and his reasonings satisfied him that such a floor 
could not exist, he became willing to allow (as St. Augustin 
allowed) that the waters above the firmament are in a state of 
vapour. And in like manner in other subjects, men, as their views 
of nature become more distinct and precise, modified, so far as it 
was necessary for consistency's sake, their first rude interpretations 
of the Sacred Narrative ; so that, without in any degree losing its 
import as a view of the providential course of the world, it should 
be so conceived as not to contradict what they knew of the natural 
order of things. 

But this accommodation was not always made without painful 
struggles and angry controversies. When men had conceived the 
occurrences of ihe Sacred Narrative in a particular manner, they 
could not readily and willingly adopt a new mode of conception ; 
and they resisted all attempts to recommend it to them, as attacks 
upon the sacredness of the Narrative. They had clothed their 
belief of the workings of Providence in certain images ; and they 
clung to those images with the persuasion that without them their 
belief could not subsist. Thus they imagined to themselves that 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 69 

the earth was a flat floor, solidly and broadly laid for the con- 
venience of man, and they felt as if the kindness of Providence 
was disparaged, when it was maintained that the earth was a globe 
held together only by the mutual attraction of its parts. 

The most memorable instance of a struggle of this kind is to be 
found in the circumstances which attended the introduction of the 
Heliocentric Theory of Copernicus to general acceptance. On 
this controversy I have already made some remarks in the History 
of Science,* and have attempted to draw from it some lessons 
which may he useful to us when any similar conflict of opinions 
may occur. I will here add a few reflections with a similar view. 
6. Such difficulties inevitable. — In the first place, I remark that 
such modifications of the current interpretation of the words of 
Scripture appear to be an inevitable consequence of the progressive 
character of Natural Science. Science is constantly teaching us to 
describe known facts in new language, but the language of Scrip- 
ture is always the same. And not only so, but the language of 
Scripture is necessarily adapted to the common state of man's intel- 
lectual developement, in which he is supposed not to be possessed 
of science. Hence the phrases used by Scripture are precisely 
those which science soon teaches man to consider as inaccurate. 
Yet they are not on that account the less fitted for their proper pur- 
pose : for if any terms had been used, adapted to a more advanced 
state of knowledge, they must have been unintelligible among those 
to whom the Scripture was first addressed. If the Jews had been 
told that water existed in the clouds in small drops, they would 
have marvelled that it did not constantly descend ; and to have ex- 
plained the reason of this, would have been to teach Atmology in 
the sacred writings. If they had read in their Scripture that the 
earth was a sphere, when it appeared to be a plain, they would only 
have been disturbed in their thoughts, or driven to some wild and 
baseless imaginations by a declaration to them so strange. If the 
Divine Speaker, instead of saying that he would set his bow in the 
clouds, had been made to declare that he would give to water the 
property of refracting different colours at different angles, how 
utterly unmeaning to the hearers would the words have been ! And in 
these cases, the expressions, being unintelligible, startling, and 
bewildering, would have been such as tended to unfit the Sacred 
Narrative for its place in the providential dispensation of the world. 
Accordingly, in the great controversy which took place in Gali- 
leo's time between the defenders of the then customary interpreta- 
tions of Scripture, and the assertors of the Copernican system of the 
universe, when the innovators were upbraided with maintaining 
opinions contrary to Scripture, they replied that Scripture was not 
intended to teach men astronomy, and that it expressed the acts of 
divine power in images which were suited to the ideas of unscien- 
tific men. To speak of the rising and setting and travelling of the 
sun, of the fixity and of the foundations of the earth, was to use the 

* Hist. Ind. Sci. i., 401. 



70 PALiETIOLOGY. 

only language which would have made the Sacred Narrative intel- 
ligible. To extract from these and the like expressions doctrines 
of science, was, they declared, in the highest degree unjustifiable; 
and such a course could lead, they held, to no result but a weaken- 
ing of the authority of Scripture in proportion as its credit was 
identified with that of these modes of applying it. And this judg- 
ment has since been generally assented to by those who most 
reverence and value the study of the designs of Providence as well 
as that of the works of nature. 

7. Science tells us nothing concerning Creation. — Other appa- 
rent difficulties arise from the accounts given in the Scripture of 
the first origin of the world in which we live: for example, light is 
represented as created before the sun. With regard to difficulties 
of this kind, it appears that we may derive some instruction from the 
result to which we were led in the last chapter; — namely, that in 
the sciences which trace the progress of natural occurrences, we 
can in no case go back to an origin, but in every instance appear to 
find ourselves separated from it by a state of things, and an order of 
events, of a kind altogether different from those which come under 
our experience. The thread of induction respecting the natural 
course of the world snaps in our fingers, when we try to ascertain 
where its beginning is. Since, then, science can teach us nothing- 
positive respecting the beginning of things, she can neither contra- 
dict nor confirm what is taught by Scripture on that subject; and 
thus, as it is unworthy timidity to fear contradiction, so is it un- 
grounded presumption to look for confirmation in such cases. The 
providential history of the world has its own beginning, and its own 
evidence; and we can only render the system insecure, by making 
it lean on our material sciences. If any one were to suggest that 
the nebular hypothesis countenances the Scripture history of the 
formation of this system, by showing how the luminous matter of 
the sun might exist previous to the sun itself, we should act wisely 
in rejecting such an attempt to weave together these two hetero- 
geneous threads; — the one a part of a providential scheme, the 
other a fragment of physical speculation. 

We shall best learn those lessons of the true philosophy of science 
which it is our object to collect, by attending to portions of science 
which have gone through such crises as we are now considering; 
nor is it requisite, for this purpose, to bring forwards any subjects 
which are still under discussion. It may, however, be mentioned 
that such maxims as we are now endeavouring to establish, and the 
one before us in particular, bear with a peculiar force upon those 
Palsetiological Sciences of which w T e have been treating in the 
present Book. 

8. Scientific views, when familiar, do not disturb the authority of 
Scripture. — There is another reflection which may serve to con- 
sole and encourage us in the painful struggles which thus take 
place, between those who maintain interpretations of Scripture 
already prevalent and those who contend for such new ones as the 
new discoveries of science require. It is this; — that though the 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 71 

now opinion is rented by one party as something destructive of the 
credit of Scripture and the reverence which is its due, yet, in fact, 
when the new interpretation lias been generally established and 
incorporated with men's current thoughts, it ceases to disturb their 
views of the authority of the Scripture or of the truth of its teach- 
ing. When the language of Scripture, invested with its new 
meaning, has become familiar to men, it is found that the ideas which 
it calls up are quite as reconcilable as the former ones were with 
the most entire acceptance of the providential dispensation. And 
when this has been found to be the case, all cultivated persons look 
back with surprise at the mistake of those who thought that the 
essence of the revelation was involved in their own arbitrary version 
of some collateral circumstance in the revealed narrative. At the 
present day, we can hardly conceive how reasonable men could 
ever have imagined that religious reflections on the stability of the 
earth, and the beauty and use of the luminaries which revolve round 
it, would be interfered with by an acknowledgment that this rest 
and motion are apparent only.* And thus the authority of revela- 
tion is not shaken by any changes introduced by the progress of 
science in the mode of interpreting expressions which describe 
physical objects and occurrences; provided the new interpretation 
is admitted at a proper season, and in a proper spirit; so as to 
soften, as much as possible, both the public controversies and the 
private scruples which almost inevitably accompany such an altera- 
tion. 

9. When should old interpretations be given up ? — But the ques- 
tion then occurs, What is the proper season for a religious and 
enlightened commentator to make such a change in the current 
interpretation of sacred Scripture] At what period ought the 
established exposition of a passage to be given up, and a new mode 
of understanding the passage, such as is, or seems to be, required 
by new discoveries respecting the laws of nature, accepted in its 
place ] It is plain, that to introduce such an alteration lightly and 
hastily would be a procedure fraught with inconvenience; for if the 
change were made in such a manner, it might be afterwards dis- 
covered that it had been adopted without sufficient reason, and that 
it was necessary to reinstate the old exposition. And the minds of 
the readers of Scripture, always to a certain extent and for a time 
disturbed by the subversion of their long-established notions, would 
be distressed without any need, and might be seriously unsettled. 
While, on the other hand, a too protracted and obstinate resistance 
to the innovation, on the part of the scriptural expositors, would tend 
to identify, at least in the minds of many, the authority of the Scrip- 
ture with the truth of the exposition ; and therefore would bring 
discredit upon the revealed word, when the established interpreta- 
tion was finally proved to be untenable. 

A rule on this subject, propounded by some of the most enlight- 
ened dignitaries of the Roman Catholic church, on the occasion of 

* I have here borrowed a sentence or two from my own History. 



72 PAL^TIOLOGY. 

the great Copernican controversy begun by Galileo, seems well 
worthy of our attention. The following was the opinion given by 
Cardinal Bellarmine at the time: — "When a demonstration shall 
be found to establish the earth's motion, it will be proper to inter- 
pret the sacred Scriptures otherwise than they have hitherto been 
interpreted in those passages where mention is made of the stabi- 
lity of the earth and movement of the heavens." This appears to 
be a judicious and reasonable maxim for such cases in general. 
So long as the supposed scientific discovery is doubtful, the expo- 
sition of the meaning of Scripture given by commentators of es- 
tablished credit is not wantonly to be disturbed ; but when a sci- 
entific theory, irreconcilable with this ancient interpretation, is 
clearly proved, we must give up the interpretation, and seek some 
new mode of understanding the passage in question, by means of 
which it may be consistent with what we know; for if it be not, 
our conception of the things so described is no longer consistent 
with itself. 

It may be said that this rule is indefinite, for who shall decide 
when a new theory is completely demonstrated, and the old inter- 
pretation become untenable 1 But to this we may reply, that if the 
rule be assented to, its application will not be very difficult. For 
when men have admitted as a general rule, that the current inter- 
pretations of scriptural expressions respecting natural objects and 
events may possibly require, and in some cases certainly will re- 
quire, to be abandoned, and new ones admitted, they will hardly 
allow themselves to contend for such interpretations as if they 
were essential parts of revelation ; and will look upon the change 
of exposition, whether it come sooner or later, without alarm or 
anger. And when men lend themselves to the progress of truth 
in this spirit, it is not of any material importance at what period a 
new and satisfactory interpretation of the scriptural difficulty is 
found ; since a scientific exactness in our apprehension of the 
meaning of such passages as are now referred to is very far from 
being essential to our full acceptance of revelation. 

10. In what Spirit should the Change be accepted ? — Still these 
revolutions in scriptural interpretation must always have in them 
something which distresses and disturbs religious communities. 
And such uneasy feelings will take a different shape, according as 
the community acknowledges or rejects a paramount interpretative 
authority in its religious leaders. In the case in which the inter- 
pretation of the Church is binding upon all its members, the more 
placid minds rest in peace upon the ancient exposition, till the spi- 
ritual authorities announce that the time for the adoption of a new 
view has arrived ; but in these circumstances, the more stirring 
and inquisitive minds, which cannot refrain from the pursuit of 
new truths and exact conceptions, are led to opinions which, being 
contrary to those of the Church, are held to be sinful. On the 
other hand, if the religious constitution of the community allow 
and encourage each man to study and interpret for himself the 
Sacred Writings, we are met by evils of another kind. In this 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 73 

case, although, by the unforced influence of admired commentators, 
there may prevail a general agreement in the usual interpretation 
of difficult passages, yet as each reader of the Scripture looks upon 
the sense which he has adopted as being his own interpretation, he 
maintains it, not with the tranquil acquiescence of one who has 
deposited his judgment in the hands of his church, but with the 
keenness and strenuousness of self-love. In such a state of things, 
though no judicial severities can be employed against the innova- 
tors, there may arise more angry controversies than in the other 
case. 

It is impossible to overlook the lesson which here offers itself, 
that it is in the highest degree unwise in the friends of religion, 
whether individuals or communities, unnecessarily to embark their 
credit in expositions of Scripture on matters which appertain to 
natural science. By delivering physical doctrines as the teaching 
of revelation, religion may lose much, but cannot gain any thing. 
This maxim of practical wisdom has often been urged by Christian 
writers. Thus St. Augustin says:* "In obscure matters and 
things far removed from our senses, if we read any thing, even in 
the divine Scripture, which may produce diverse opinions without 
damaging the faith which we cherish, let us not rush headlong by 
positive assertion to either the one opinion or the other ; lest, when 
a more thorough discussion has shown the opinion which we had 
adopted to be false, our faith may fall with it: and we should be 
found contending, not for the doctrine of the sacred Scriptures, but 
for our own ; endeavouring to make our doctrine to be that of the 
Scriptures, instead of taking the doctrine of the Scriptures to be 
ours." And in nearly the same spirit, at the time of the Coperni- 
can controversy, it was thought proper to append to the work of 
Copernicus a postil, to say that the work was written to account 
for the phenomena, and that people must not run on blindly and 
condemn either of the opposite opinions. Even when the Inquisi- 
tion, in 1616, thought itself compelled to pronounce a decision upon 
this subject, the verdict was delivered in very moderate language ; 
— that " the doctrine of the earth's motion appeared to be contrary 
to Scripture:" and yet, moderate as this expression is, it has been 
blamed by judicious members of the Ro*nan church as deciding a 
point such as religious authorities ought not to pretend to decide; 
and has brought upon that church no ordinary weight of general 
condemnation. Kepler pointed out, in his lively manner, the im- 
prudence of employing the force of religious authorities on such 
subjects : Acies dolabrce in ferrum illisa, postea nee in lignum 
valet amplius. Capiat hoc cujus interest. " If you will try to 
chop iron, the axe becomes unable to cut even wood." 

11. In what Spirit should the Change be urged? — But while 
we thus endeavour to show in what manner the interpreters of 
Scripture may most safely and most properly accept the discoveries 
of science, we must not forget that there may be errors committed 

* Lib. i. de Genesi, cap. xviii. 

7 



74 PAL^TIOLOGY. 

on the other side also; and that men of science, in bringing for- 
ward views which may for a time disturb the minds of lovers of 
Scripture, should consider themselves as bound by strict rules of 
candour, moderation, and prudence. Intentionally to make their 
supposed discoveries a means of discrediting, contradicting, or 
slighting the sacred Scriptures, or the authority of religion, is in 
them unpardonable. As men who make the science of Truth the 
business of their lives, and are persuaded of her genuine supe- 
riority, and certain of her ultimate triumph, they are peculiarly 
bound to urge her claims in a calm and temperate spirit; not for- 
getting that there are other kinds of truth besides that which they 
peculiarly study. They may properly reject authority in matters 
of science ; but they are to leave it its proper office in matters of 
religion. I may here again quote Kepler's expressions : " In Theo- 
logy we balance authorities, in Philosophy we weigh reasons. A 
holy man was Lactantius who denied that the earth was round ; a 
holy man was Augustin, who granted the rotundity, but denied 
the antipodes ; a holy thing to me is the Inquisition, which allows 
the smallness of the earth, but denies its motion; but more holy to 
me is Truth ; and hence I prove, from philosophy, that the earth 
is round, and inhabited on every side, of small size, and in motion 
among the stars, — and this I do with no disrespect to the Doctors." 
I the more willingly quote such a passage from Kepler, because 
the entire ingenuousness and sincere piety of his character does 
not allow us to suspect in him any thing of hypocrisy or latent 
irony. That similar professions of respect may be made ironically, 
we have a noted example in the celebrated Introduction to Gali- 
leo's Dialogue on the Copernican System; probably the part 
which was most offensive to the authorities. "Some years ago," 
he begins, "a wholesome edict was promulgated at Rome, which, 
in order to check the perilous scandals of the present age, imposed 
silence upon the Pythagorean opinion of the mobility of the earth. 
There were not wanting," he proceeds, " persons who rashly as- 
serted that this decree was the result, not of a judicious inquiry, 
but of passion ill-informed ; and complaints were heard that coun- 
sellors, utterly unacquainted with astronomical observation, ought 
not to be allowed, with thejr sudden prohibitions, to clip the wings 
of speculative intellects. At the hearing of rash lamentations 
like these, my zeal could not keep silence." And he then goes on 
to say, that he wishes, in his Dialogue, to show that the subject 
had been fully examined at Rome. Here the irony is quite trans- 
parent, and the sarcasm glaringly obvious. I think we may ven- 
ture to say that this is not the temper in which scientific questions 
should be treated ; although by some, perhaps, the prohibition of 
public discussion may be considered as justifying any evasion which 
is likely to pass unpunished. 

12. Duty of Mutual Forbearance. — We may add, as a further 
reason for mutual forbearance in such cases, that the true interests 
of both parties are the same. The man of science is concerned, 
no less than any other person, in the truth and import of the divine 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 75 

dispensation ; the religious man, no less than the man of science, 
is, by the nature of his intellect, incapable of believing two contra- 
dictory declarations. Hence they have both alike a need for under- 
standing the Scripture in some way in which it shall be consistent 
with their understanding of nature. It is for their common advan- 
tage to conciliate, as Kepler says, the finger and the tongue of 
God, his works and his word. And they may find abundant reason 
to bear with each other, even if they should adopt for this purpose 
different interpretations, each finding one satisfactory to himself; 
or if any one should decline employing his thoughts on such sub- 
jects at all. I have elsewhere* quoted a passage from Keplerf 
which appears to be written in a most suitable spirit: " I beseech 
my reader that, not unmindful of the Divine goodness bestowed 
upon man, he do with me praise and celebrate the wisdom of the 
Creator, which I open to him from a more inward explication of the 
form of the world, from a searching of causes, from a detection of 
the errors of vision; and that thus, not only in the firmness and 
stability of the earth may we perceive with gratitude the preserva- 
tion of all living things in nature as the gift of God ; but also that 
in its motion, so recondite, so admirable, we may acknowledge the 
wisdom of the Creator. But whoever is too dull to receive this 
science, or too weak to believe the Copernican system without 
harm to his piety, him, I say, I advise that, leaving the school of 
astronomy, and condemning, if so he please, any doctrines of the 
philosophers, he follow his own path, and desist from this wandering 
through the universe ; and that, lifting up his natural eyes, with 
which alone he can see, he pour himself out from his own heart in 
worship of God the Creator, being certain that he gives no less 
worship to God than the astronomer, to whom God has given to see 
more clearly with his inward eyes, and who, from what he has 
himself discovered, both can and will glorify God." 

13. Case of Galileo.'— 1 may perhaps venture here to make a 
remark or two upon this subject with reference to a charge brought 
against a certain portion of the History of the Inductive Sciences. 
(p. 13 of this). Complaint has been madef that the character of 
the Roman church, as shown in its behaviour towards Galileo, is 
misrepresented in the account given of it in the History of Astro- 
nomy. It is asserted that Galileo provoked the condemnation he 
incurred ; first, by pertinaciously demanding the assent of the 
ecclesiastical authorities to his opinion of the consistency of the 
Copernican doctrine with Scripture; and afterwards by contuma- 
ciously, and, as we have seen, contumeliously violating the silence 
which the church enjoined upon him. It is further declared that 
the statement which represents it as the habit of the Roman 
church to dogmatize on points of natural science is unfounded ; as 
well as the opinion that in consequence of this habit, new scientific 
truths were promulgated less boldly in Italy than in other countries. 

* Bridgewater Treatise, p. 314. t Com. Stell. Mart. Introd. 
Dublin Review, No ix. July, 1838, p. 72. 



76 TAL^TIOLOGY. 

I shall reply very briefly on these subjects; for the decision of them 
is by no means requisite in order to establish the doctrines to which 
I have been led in the present chapter, nor, I hope, to satisfy my 
reader that my views have been collected from an impartial con- 
sideration of scientific history. 

With regard to Galileo, I do not think it can be denied that he 
obtruded his opinions upon the ecclesiastical authorities in an un- 
necessary and imprudent manner. He was of an ardent character, 
strongly convinced himself, and urged on still more by the convic- 
tion which he produced among his disciples, and thus he became 
impatient for the triumph of truth. This judgment of him has 
recently been delivered by various independent authorities, and has 
undoubtedly considerable foundation.* As to the question whether 
authority in matters of natural science were habitually claimed by 
the authorities of the Church of Rome, 1 have to allow that I cannot 
produce instances which establish such a habit. We who have 
been accustomed to have daily before our eyes the monition which 
the Romish editors of Newton thought it necessary to prefix — 
Cceterum laiis a summo Pontijice contra lelluris motum Decretis, 
nos obsequi prqfitemur — were not likely to conjecture that this was 
a solitary instance of the interposition of the Papal authority on 
such subjects. But although it would be easy to find declarations 
of heresy delivered by Romish Universities, and writers of great 
authority, against tenets belonging to the natural sciences, I am 
not aware that any other case can be adduced in which the Church 
or the Pope can be shown to have pronounced such a sentence. I 
am well contented to acknowledge this ; for I should be far more 
gratified by finding myself compelled to hold up the seventeenth 
century as a model for the nineteenth in this respect, than by 
having to sow enmity between the admirers of the past and the 
present through any disparaging contrast.f 

With respect to the attempt made in my History to characterize 
the intellectual habits of Italy as produced by her religious condi- 
tion, — certainly it would ill become any student of the history of 
science to speak slightingly of that country, always the mother of 
sciences, always ready to catch the dawn and hail the rising of any 
new light of knowledge. But I think our admiration of this acti- 

* Besides the Dublin Review, I may quote the Edinburgh Review, 
which I suppose will not be thought likely to have a bias in favour of 
the exercise of ecclesiastical authority in matters of science : " Galileo 
contrived to surround the truth with every variety of obstruction. The 
tide of knowledge, which had hitherto advanced in peace, he crested 
with angry breakers, and he involved in its surf both his friends and his 
foes."— Ed. Rev. No. cxxiii. p. 126. 

t I may add that the most candid of the adherents of the Church of 
Rome condemn the assumption of authority in matters of science, made, 
in this one instance at least, by the ecclesiastical tribunals. The author 
of the Ages of Faith (Book viii. p. 248,) says, u A congregation, it is to 
be lamented, declared the new system to be opposed to Scripture, and 
therefore heretical." 



RELATION OP TRADITION THERETO. 77 

vity and acuteness of mind is by no means inconsistent with the 
opinion, that new truths were promulgated more boldly beyond the 
Alps, and that the subtilty of the Italian intellect loved to insinuate 
what the rough German bluntly asserted. Of the decent duplicity 
with which forbidden opinions were handled, the reviewer himself 
gives us instances, when he boasts of the liberality with which 
Copernican professors were placed in important stations by the 
ecclesiastical authorities, soon after the doctrine of the motion of the 
earth had been declared by the same authorities contrary to Scrip- 
ture. And in the same spirit is the process of demanding from 
Galileo a public and official recantation of opinions which he had 
repeatedly been told by his ecclesiastical superiors he might hold 
as much as he pleased. I think it is easy to believe that among 
persons so little careful to reconcile public profession with private 
conviction, official decorum was all that was demanded. When 
Galileo had made his renunciation of the earth's motion on his 
knees, he rose and said, as we are told, E pur si muove — " and 
yet it does move." This is sometimes represented as the heroic 
soliloquy of a mind cherishing its conviction of the truth, in spite 
of persecution ; I think we may more naturally conceive it uttered 
as a playful epigram in the ear of a cardinal's secretary, with a full 
knowledge that it would be immediately repeated to his master. 

Besides the Ideas involved in the material sciences, of which we 
have already examined the principal ones, there is one Idea or 
Conception which our Sciences do not indeed include, but to 
which they not obscurely point ; and the importance of this Idea 
will make it proper to speak of it, though this must be done very 
briefly. 

OF THE CONCEPTION OF A FIRST CAUSE. 

1. At the end of the last chapter (p. 65), we were led to this 
result, — that we cannot, in any of the Palsetiological Sciences, 
ascend to a beginning which is of the same nature as the existing 
cause of events, and which depends upon causes that are still in 
operation. Philosophers never have demonstrated, and probably 
never will be able to demonstrate, what was the original condition 
of the solar system, of the earth, of the vegetable and animal 
worlds, of languages, of arts. On all these subjects the course of 
investigation, followed backwards as far as our materials allow us 
to pursue it, ends at last in an impenetrable gloom. We strain 
our eyes in vain when we try, by our natural faculties, to discern 
an Origin. 

2. Yet speculative men have been constantly employed in at- 
tempts to arrive at that which thus seems to be placed out of their 
reach. The Origin of Languages, the Origin of the present Dis- 
tribution of Plants and Animals, the Origin of the Earth, have 
been common subjects of diligent and persevering inquiry. Indeed 
inquiries respecting such subjects have been, at least till lately, 
the usual form which Palactioloirical researches have assumed. 

7* 



78 PALiETIOLOGY. 

Cosmogony, the origin of the world, of which, in such specula- 
tions, the earth was considered as a principal part, has been a 
favourite study both of ancient and of modern times : and most of 
the attempts at Geology previous to the present period have been 
Cosmogonies or Geogonies, rather than that more genuine science 
which we have endeavoured to delineate. Glossology, though now 
an extensive body of solid knowledge, was mainly brought into 
being by inquiries concerning the original language spoken by 
men; and the nature of the first separation and diffusion of lan- 
guages, the first peopling of the earth by man and by animals, 
were long sought after with ardent curiosity, although of course 
with reference to the authority of the Scriptures, as well as the 
evidence of natural phenomena. Indeed the interest of such in- 
quiries even yet is far from being extinguished. The disposition 
to explore the past in the hope of finding, by the light of natural 
reasoning as well as by the aid of revelation, the origin of the pre- 
sent course of things, appears to be unconquerable. What was 
the beginning] is a question which the human race cannot desist 
from perpetually asking. And no failure in obtaining a satisfactory 
answer can prevent inquisitive spirits from again and again repeat- 
ing the inquiry, although the blank abyss into which it is uttered 
does not even return an echo. 

3. What, then, is the reason of an attempt so pertinacious yet 
so fruitless 1 By what motive are we impelled thus constantly to 
seek what we can never find ! Why are the error of our conjec- 
tures, the futility of our reasonings, the precariousness of our in- 
terpretations, over and over again proved to us in vain] Why is 
it impossible for us to acquiesce in our ignorance and to relinquish 
the inquiry ] Why cannot we content ourselves with examining 
those links of the chain of causes which are nearest to us; — those 
in which the connexion is intelligible and clear; instead of fixing 
our attention upon those remote portions where we can no longer 
estimate its coherence] In short, why did not men from the first 
take for the subject of their speculations the Course of Nature 
rather than the Origin of Things ] 

To this we reply, that in doing what they have thus done, in 
seeking what they have sought, men are impelled by an intel- 
lectual necessity. They cannot conceive a series of connected 
occurrences without a commencement; they cannot help sup- 
posing a cause for the whole, as well as a cause for each part ; 
they cannot be satisfied with a succession of causes without as- 
suming a First Cause. Such an assumption is necessarily im- 
pressed upon our minds by our contemplation of a series of causes 
and effects; that there must be a First Cause, is accepted by all 
intelligent reasoners as an Axiom : and like other Axioms, its 
truth is necessarily implied in the Idea which it involves. 

4. The evidence of this axiom may be illustrated in several 
ways. In the first place, the axiom is assumed in the argument 
usually offered to prove the existence of the Deity. Since, it is 
said, the world now exists, and since nothing cannot produce some- 



CONCEPTION OF A FIRST CAUSE. 79 

thing, something must have existed from eternity. This Some- 
thing- is the First Cause : it is God. 

Now what I have to remark here is this : the conclusiveness of 
this argument, as a proof of the existence of one independent, im- 
mutable Deity, depends entirely upon the assumption of the axiom 
above stated. The world, a series of causes and effects, exists : 
therefore there must be, not only this series of causes and effects, 
but also a First Cause. It will be easily seen, that without the 
axiom, that in every series of causes and effects there must be a 
First Cause, the reasoning is altogether inconclusive. 

5. Or to put the matter otherwise : The argument for the ex- 
istence of the Deity was stated thus : Something exists, therefore 
something must have existed from eternity. Granted, the oppo- 
nent might say ; but this something which has existed from eter- 
nity, why may it not be this very series of causes and effects 
which is now going on, and which appears to contain in itself no 
indication of beginning or end ] And thus, without the assump- 
tion of the necessity of a First Cause, the force of the argument 
may be resisted. 

6. But, it may be asked, how do those who have written to 
prove the existence of the Deity reply to such an objection as the 
one just stated ] It is natural to suppose that, on a subject so in- 
teresting and so long discussed, all the obvious arguments, with 
their replies, have been fully brought into view. What is the re- 
sult in this case? 

The principal modes of replying to the above objection, that the 
series of causes and effects which now exists, may have existed 
from eternity, appear to be these. 

In the first place, our minds cannot be satisfied with a series of 
successive, dependent, causes and effects, without something first 
and independent. We pass from effect to cause, and from that to 
a higher cause, in search of something on which the mind can 
rest ; but if we can do nothing but repeat this process, there is no 
use in it. We move our limbs, but make no advance. Our ques- 
tion is not answered, but evaded. The mind cannot acquiesce in 
the destiuy thus presented to it, of being referred from event to 
event, from object to object, along an interminable vista of causa- 
tion and time. Now this mode of stating the reply, — to say that 
the mind cannot thus be satisfied, appears to be equivalent to say- 
ing that the mind is conscious of a principle in virtue of which 
such a view as this must be rejected; — the mind takes refuge in 
the assumption of a First Cause, from an employment inconsistent 
with its own nature. 

7. Or again, we may avoid the objection, by putting the argument 
for the existence of a Deity in this form : The series of causes and 
effects which we call the world, or the course of nature, may be con- 
sidered as a whole, and this whole must have a cause of its existence. 
The whole collection of objects and events may be comprehended 
as a single effect, and of this effect there must be a cause. This 
Cause of the Universe must be superior to, and independent of the 



80 PALJETIOLOGY. 

special events, which, happening in time, make up the universe of 
which He is the cause. He must exist and exercise causation, 
before these events can begin: He must be the First Cause. 

Although the argument is here somewhat modified in form, the 
substance is the same as before. For the assumption that we may 
consider the whole series of causes and effects as a single effect, is 
equivalent to the assumption that besides partial causes, we must 
have a First Cause. And thus the Idea of a First Cause, and the 
axiom which asserts its necessity, are recognised in the usual ar- 
gumentation on this subject. 

8. This Idea of a First Cause, and the principles involved in the 
Idea, have been the subject of discussion in another manner. As 
we have already said, we assume as an axiom that a First Cause 
must exist ; and we assert that God, the First Cause, exists eternal 
and immutable, by the necessity which the axiom implies. Hence 
God is said to exist necessarily ; — to be a necessarily existing 
being. And when this necessary existence of God has been spoken 
of, it soon began to be contemplated as a sufficient reason, and as 
an absolute demonstration of His existence; without any need of 
referring to the world as an effect, in order to arrive at God as the 
cause. And thus men conceived that they had obtained a proof of 
the existence of the Deity, a priori, from ideas, as well as a poste- 
riori, from effects. 

9. Thus, Thomas Aquinas employs this reasoning to prove the 
eternity of God.* "Oportet ponere aliquod primum necessarium 
quod est per se ipsum necessarium; et hoc est Deus, cum sit 
prima causa ut dictum est: igitur Deus seternus est, cum omne 
necessarium per se sit seternum." It is true that the schoolmen 
never professed to be able to prove the existence of the Deity 
a priori : but they made use of this conception of necessary ex- 
istence in a manner which approached very near to such an attempt. 
Thus Suarezf discusses the question, " Utrum aliquo modo possit 
a priori demonstrari Deum esse." And resolves the question in 
this manner: "Ad hunc ergo modum dicendum est: Demonstrato 
a posteriori Deum esse ens necessarium et a se, ex hoc attributo 
posse a priori demonstrari prsster illud non posse esse aliud ens 
necessarium et a se, et consequenter demonstrari Deum esse." 

But in modern times attempts were made by Descartes and 
Samuel Clarke, to prove the Divine existence at once a priori, 
from the conception of necessary existence ; which, it was argued, 
could not subsist without actual existence. This argumentation 
was acutely and severely criticised by Dr. Waterland. 

10. Without dwelling upon a subject, the discussion of which 
does not enter into the design of the present work, I may remark 
that the question whether an a priori proof of the existence of a 
First Cause be posssible, is a question concerning the nature of our 
Ideas, and the evidence of the axioms which they involve, of the 
same kind as many questions which we have already had to dis- 

* Aquin. Cont. Gentil. Lib. i. Chap. xiv. p. 21. 
t Metaphys. Tom. ii. Disp. xxix. Sect. 3. p. 28. 



CONCEPTION OF A FIRST CAUSE. 81 

cuss. Is our Conception or Idea of a First Cause gathered from 
the effects we see around us? It is plain that we must answer, 
here as in other cases, that the Idea is not extracted from the phe- 
nomena, but assumed in order that the phenomena may become in- 
telligible to the mind ; — that the Idea is a necessary one, inasmuch 
as it does not depend upon observation for its evidence ; but that it 
depends upon observation for its developement, since without some 
observation, we cannot conceive the mind to be cognizant of the 
relation of causation at all. In this respect, however, the Idea of a 
First Cause is no less necessary than the ideas of Space, or Time, 
or Cause in general. And whether we call the reasoning derived 
from such a necessity an argument a priori or a posteriori, in either 
case it possesses the genuine character of demonstration, being 
founded upon axioms which command universal assent. 

11. I have, however, spoken of our Conception rather than of 
our Idea of a First Cause ; for the notion of a First Cause appears 
to be rather a modification of the Fundamental Idea of Cause, 
which was formerly discussed, than a separate and peculiar Idea. 
And the Axiom, that there must be a First Cause, is recognised by 
most persons as an application of the general Axiom of Causation, 
that every effect must have a cause ; this latter Axiom being applied 
to the world, considered in its totality, as a single effect. This 
distinction, however, between an Idea and a Conception, is of no 
material consequence to our argument ; provided we allow the 
maxim, that there must be a First Cause, to be necessarily and 
evidently true ; whether it be thought better to speak of it as an 
independent Axiom, or to consider it as derived from the general 
Axiom of Causation. 

12. Thus we necessarily infer a First Cause, although the 
Palaetiological Sciences only point towards it, and do not lead to it. 
But I must observe further ; that in each of the series of events 
which form the subject of Palaetiological research, the First 
Cause is the same. Without here resting upon reasoning founded 
upon our Conception of a First Cause, I may remark that this 
identity is proved by the close connexion of all the branches of 
natural science, and the way in which the causes and the events of 
each are interwoven with those which belong to the others. We 
must needs believe that the First Cause which produced the earth 
and its atmosphere is also the Cause of the plants which clothe its 
surface ; that the First Cause of the vegetable and of the animal 
world are the same ; that the First Cause which produced light 
produced also eyes ; that the First Cause which produced air and 
organs of articulation produced also language and the faculties by 
which language is rendered possible : and if those faculties, then 
also all man's other faculties ; — the powers by which, as we have 
said, he discerns right and wrong, and recognises a providential as 
well as a natural course of things. Nor can we think otherwise 
than that the Being who gave these faculties, bestowed them for 
that purpose which alone is compatible with their nature : — the 
purpose, namely, of guiding and elevating man in his present 



82 PAL2ETI0L0GY. 

career, and of preparing him for another state of being to which 
they irresistibly direct his hopes. And thus, although, as we have 
said, no one of the Palsetiological Sciences can be traced con- 
tinuously to an origin, yet they not only each point to an origin, 
but all to the same origin. Their lines are broken indeed, as they 
run backwards into the early periods of the world, but yet they all 
appear to converge to the same invisible point. And this point, 
thus indicated by the natural course of things, can be no other than 
that which is disclosed to us as the starting point of the providential 
course of the world ; for we are persuaded by such reasons as have 
just been hinted, that the Creator of the natural world can be no 
other than the Author and Governor and Judge of the moral and 
spiritual world. 

13. Thus we are led, by our material sciences, and especially by 
the Palaetiological class of them, to the borders of a higher region, 
and to a point of view from which we have a prospect of other 
provinces of knowledge, in which other faculties of man are con- 
cerned besides his intellectual, other interests involved besides those 
of speculation. On these it does not belong to our present plan to 
dwell : but even such a brief glance as we have taken of the con- 
nexion of material with moral speculations may not be useless, since 
it may serve to show that the principles of truth which we are now 
laboriously collecting among the results of the physical sciences, 
may possibly find some application in those parts of knowledge to- 
wards which men most naturally look with deeper interest and more 
serious reverence. 

OF THE SUPREME CAUSE. 

The first Induction of a Cause does not close the business of 
scientific inquiry. Behind proximate causes, there are ulterior 
causes, perhaps a succession of such. Gravity is the cause of the 
motions of the planets; but what is the cause of gravity] This is 
a question which has occupied men's minds from the time of New- 
ton to the present day. Earthquakes and volcanoes are the causes 
of many geological phenomena; but what is the cause of those sub- 
terraneous operations] This inquiry after ulterior causes i3 an 
inevitable result from the intellectual constitution of man. He 
discovers mechanical causes, but he cannot rest in them. He must 
needs ask, whence it is that matter has its universal power of at- 
tracting matter. He discovers polar forces: but even if these be 
universal, he still desires a further insight into the cause of this 
polarity. He sees, in organic structures, convincing marks of 
adaptation to an end: whence, he asks, is this adaptation] He 
traces in the history of the earth a chain of causes and effects ope- 
rating through time : but what, he inquires, is the power which 
holds the end of this chain] 

Thus we are referred back from step to step, in the order of cau- 
sation, in the same manner as, in the palaetiological sciences, we 
were referred back in the order of time. We make discovery after 



OF THE SUPREME CAUSE. 83 

discovery in the various regions of science; each, it may be, satis- 
factory, and in itself complete, but none final. Something always 
remains undone. The last question answered, the answer suggests 
still another question. The strain of music from the lyre of Science 
flows on, rich and sweet, full and harmonious, but never reaches a 
close: no cadence is heard with which the intellectual ear can feel 
satisfied. 

Tn the utterance of Science, no cadence is heard withjwhich the 
human mind can feel satisfied. Yet we cannot but go on listening 
for and expecting a satisfactory close. The notion of a cadence 
appears to be essential to our relish of the music. The idea of some 
closing strain seems to lurk among our own thoughts, waiting to be 
articulated in the notes which flow from the knowledge of external 
nature. The idea of something ultimate in our philosophical re- 
searches, something in which the mind can acquiesce, and which 
will leave us no further questions to ask, of whence, and why, and 
by ivhat power, seems as if it belonged to us; — as if we could not 
have it withheld from us by any imperfection or incompleteness in 
the actual performances of science. What is the meaning of this 
conviction 7 What is the reality thus anticipated! Whither does 
the developement of this Idea conduct us 7 

We have already seen that a difficulty of the same kind, which 
arises in the contemplation of causes and effects considered as 
forming an historical series, drives us to the assumption of a First 
Cause, as an Axiom to which our Idea of Causation in time neces- 
sarily leads. And as we were thus guided to a First Cause in order 
of Succession, the same kind of necessity directs us to a Supreme 
Cause in order of Causation. 

On this most weighty subject it is difficult to speak fitly; and the 
present is not the proper occasion, even for most of that which may 
be said. But there are one or two remarks which flow from the 
general train of the contemplations we have been engaged in, and 
with which this work must conclude. 

We have seen how different are the kinds of cause to which we 
are led by scientific researches. Mechanical Forces are insufficient 
without Chemical Affinities ; Chemical agencies fail us, and we are 
compelled to have recourse to Vital Poioers ; Vital Powers cannot 
be merely physical, and we must believe in something hyperphysi- 
cal, something of the nature of a Soul. Not only do biological 
inquiries lead us to assume an animal soul, but they drive us much 
further; they bring before us Perception, and Will evoked by Per- 
ception. Still more, these inquiries disclose to us Ideas as the 
necessary forms of Perception, in the actions of which we ourselves 
are conscious. We are aware, we cannot help being aware, of our 
Ideas and our Volitions as belonging to us, and thus we pass from 
things to persons ; we have the idea of Personality awakened. And 
the idea of Design and Purpose, of which we are conscious in our 
own minds, we find reflected back to us, with a distinctness which 
we cannot overlook, in all the arrangements which constitute the 
frame of organized beings. 



84 PAL-ETtOLOGY. 

We cannot but reflect how widely diverse are the kinds of prin- 
ciples thus set before us ; — by what vast strides we mount from the 
lower to the higher, as we proceed through that series of causes 
which the range of the sciences thus brings under our notice. Yet 
we know how narrow is the range of these sciences when compared 
with the whole extent of human knowledge. We cannot doubt 
that on many other subjects, besides those included in physical 
speculation, man has made out solid and satisfactory trains of con- 
nexion;— has discovered clear and indisputable evidence of causa- 
tion. It is manifest, therefore, that, if we are to attempt to ascend 
to the Supreme Cause — if we are to try to frame an idea of the 
Cause of all these subordinate causes; — we must conceive it as 
more different from any of them, than the most diverse are from 
each other ; — more elevated above the highest, than the highest is 
above the lowest. 

But further; — though the Supreme Cause must thus be incon- 
ceivably different from all subordinate causes, and immeasurably 
elevated above them all, it must still include in itself all that is 
essential to each of them, by virtue of that very circumstance that 
it is the Cause of their Causality. Time and space, — Infinite Time 
and Infinite Space, — must be among its attributes; for we cannot 
but conceive Infinite Time and Space as attributes of the Infinite 
Cause of the Universe. Force and Matter must depend upon it for 
their efficacy ; for we cannot conceive the activity of Force, or the 
resistance of Matter, to be independent powers. But these are its 
lower attributes. The Vital Powers, the Animal Soul, which are 
the Causes of the actions of living things, are only the Effects of 
the Supreme Cause of Life. And this Cause, even in the lowest 
forms of organized bodies, and still more in those which stand higher 
in the scale, involves a reference to Ends and Purposes, in short, to 
manifest Final Causes. Since this is so, and since, even when we 
contemplate ourselves in a view studiously narrowed, we still find 
that we have Ideas, and Will, and Personality, it would render our 
philosophy utterly incoherent and inconsistent with itself, to suppose 
that Personality, and Ideas, and Will, and Purpose, do not belong 
to the Supreme Cause from which we derive all that we have and 
all that we are. 

But we may go a step further ; — though, in our present field of 
speculation, we confine ourselves to knowledge founded on the facts 
which the external world presents to us, we cannot forget, in speak- 
ing of such a theme as that to which we have thus been led, that 
these are but a small, and the least significant portion of the facts 
which bear upon it. We cannot fail to recollect that there are 
facts belonging to the world within us, which more readily and 
strongly direct our thoughts to the Supreme Cause of all things. 
We can plainly discern that we have Ideas elevated above the 
region of mechanical causation, of animal existence, even of mere 
choice and will, which still have a clear and definite significance, 
a permanent and indestructible validity. We perceive as a fact, 
that we have a Conscience, judging of Right and Wrong; that we 



OF THE SUPREME CAUSE. 85 

have Ideas of Moral Good and Evil ; that we are compelled to con- 
ceive the organization of the moral world, as well as of the vital 
frame, to be directed to an end and governed by a purpose. And 
since the Supreme Cause is the cause of these facts, the Origin of 
these Ideas, we cannot refuse to recognise Uim as not only the 
Maker, but the Governor of the World ;; as not only a Creative, but 
a Providential Power ; as not only a Universal Father, but an Ul- 
timate Judge. 

We have already passed beyond the boundary of those speculations 
which we proposed to ourselves as the basis of our conclusions. Yet 
we may be allowed to add one other reflection. If we find in our- 
selves Ideas of Good and Evil, manifestly bestowed upon us to be 
the guides of our conduct, which guides we yet find it impossible 
consistently to obey ; — if we find ourselves directed, even by our 
natural light, to aim at a perfection of our moral nature from which 
we are constantly deviating through weakness and perverseness ; — 
if, when we thus lapse and err, we can find, in the region of Human 
Philosophy, no power which can efface our aberrations, or recon- 
cile our actual with our ideal being, or give us any steady hope and 
trust with regard to our actions, after we have thus discovered their 
incongruity with their genuine standard; — if we discern that this 
is our condition, how can we fail to see that it is in the highest 
degree consistent with all the indications supplied by such a philo- 
sophy as that of which we have been attempting to lay the founda- 
tions, that the Supreme Cause, through whom man exists as a 
moral being of vast capacities and infinite hopes, should have 
Himself provided a Teaching for our ignorance, a Propitiation for 
our sin, a Support for our weakness, a Purification and Sanctifica- 
tion of our nature? 

And thus, in concluding our long survey of the grounds and 
structure of Science, and of the lessons which the study of it teaches 
us, we find ourselves brought to a point of view in which we can 
cordially sympathize, and more than sympathise, with all the loftiest 
expressions of admiration and reverence and hope and trust, which 
have been uttered by those who in former times have spoken of the 
elevated thoughts to which the contemplation of the nature and 
progress of human knowledge gives rise. We cannot only hold 
with Galen, and Harvey, and all the great physiologists, that the 
organs of animals give evidence of a purpose ; — not only assert with 
Cuvier that this conviction of a purpose can alone enable us to un- 
derstand every part of every living thing; — not only say with 
Newton that " every true step made in philosophy brings us nearer 
to the First Cause, and is on that account highly to be valued ;" — 
and that " the business of natural philosophy is to deduce causes 
from effects, till we come to the very First Cause, which certainly 
is not mechanical ;" — but we can go much further, and declare, 
still with Newton, that "this beautiful system could have its origin 
no other way than by the purpose and command of an intelligent 
and powerful Being, who governs all things, not as the soul of the 

8 



86 PALJETIOLOGY. 

world, but as the Lord of the Universe ; who is not only God, but 
Lord and Governor." 

When we have advanced so far, there yet remains one step. We 
may recollect the prayer of one, the Master in this School of the 
Philosophy of Science : " This also we humbly and earnestly beg; 
— that human things may not prejudice such as are divine ; — neither 
that from the unlocking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a 
greater natural light, any thing may arise of incredulity or intellec- 
tual night towards divine mysteries; but rather that by our minds, 
thoroughly purged and cleansed from fancy and vanity, and yet 
subject and perfectly given up to the divine oracles, there may be 
given unto Faith the things that are Faith's." When we are thus 
prepared for a higher teaching, we may be ready to listen to a 
greater than Bacon, when he says to those who have sought their 
God in the material universe, 4 *Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him 
declare I unto you." And when we recollect how utterly inade- 
quate all human language has been shown to be, to express the 
nature of that Supremo Cause of the Natural, and Rational, and 
Moral, and Spiritual world, to which our Philosophy points with 
trembling finger and shaded eyes, we may receive, with the less 
wonder but with the more reverence, the declaration which has 
been vouchsafed to us : 

In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
God, and the Word was God. 



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